The dangers of HFCS

A new paper links the elevated consumption of high-fructose corn syrup in today’s foods with the rise in autism diagnoses:

In a provocative new peer-reviewed study published in Clinical Epigenetics, researchers led by a former FDA toxicologist purport to have found a very real link between HFCS consumption and autism.

The study’s argument is complicated but deeply disturbing. It pieces together what’s known about the genetic and metabolic factors involved with autism, including the growing evidence of a link between autism and mercury and organophosphate pesticide exposure.

Essentially, HFCS can interfere with the body’s uptake of certain dietary minerals — namely zinc. And that, when combined with other mineral deficiencies common among Americans, can cause susceptible individuals to develop autism.

The basic idea is that the protein that’s in charge of eliminating heavy metals from the human body requires zinc to function. But HFCS interferes with the body’s ability to absorb zinc, which causes the protein to be less effective and may also reduce the amount of that protein in the body. An increased heavy metal load in the body — especially when first experienced at the fetal stage — can start a chain of genetic disturbances that affect development. HFCS also interferes with calcium absorption (and not just because soda is displacing milk as the drink of choice for young kids). Calcium is crucial to elimination of organophosphate pesticides, which are also linked to developmental disorders like autism.

Now, this is just one paper. And a full understanding of it requires far more expertise in biology and genetics than I possess. But I certainly think it shifts the HFCS debate in an unexpected and troubling way. Industry wants to us to believe that if no harm is proven, no harm is done. Yet scientists are discovering ways that highly processed foods, foods we did not evolve eating, may have alarming genetic effects.

And while we can undoubtedly expect the food industry to go on the offensive by dismissing and belittling these findings, we should all be very wary of eating foods that are full of unnatural substances.

Who knows the kind of damage they do to our bodies.

More at the source.