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More Fun with High Fructose Corn Syrup!

by Rabbi Rachel Kahn-Troster · November 24th, 2008
Health, Rant!, corn syrup

I was sorting through the mail this morning and an unusually thick envelope caught my eye. As a doctor’s family, we receive all kinds of mail from drug companies and hospitals, but this one was from the Corn Refiners Association. You may recall Leah’s rant in September about the corn syrup marketing campaign. Well, the corn syrup manufacturers have gotten together and sent every single member of the American Academy of Pediatrics a slick guide to high fructose goodness called “Changing the Conversation about High Fructose Corn Syrup.” It includes “The Top Published Myths,” an FAQ, and cute ads, with quotes about the safety of HFCS from medical journals, all sent straight to your kids’ doctor.

It’s also somewhat misleading.  The debate about HFCS isn’t just about its nutritional safety and whether that leads to obesity–though those questions are definitely still there, no matter what today’s junk mail is trying to tell me (Much of the research touted in the ads and the mailing was paid for by companies with an interest in the outcome). The issue is that the low price of HFCS as compared to sugar has lead to an explosion of cheap junk food, in larger and larger sizes, and that has been linked to the obesity epidemic. There would be no super-sizing without HFCS.

Ads that sell a type of food aren’t new and neither is marketing to doctors. But our mail isn’t exactly cluttered every day with mail from the carrot farmers or the lima bean processors. We’ve actually never received mail from a food before–and that’s what’s troubling me. Pediatricians are on the fronts lines teaching parents about nutrition and dealing with the consequences of obesity–they have a lot of good reasons to question the nutritional value of HFCS. There have been studies that show how deeply enmeshed drug companies are in the education of our doctors, a relationship that affects which drugs we are prescribed. Is the next frontier the food industry educating our doctors, opening up a new front in the battle to make us eat more food, and more processed food?

Though perhaps true chutzpah might have been to send this to dentists.

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5 Responses to “More Fun with High Fructose Corn Syrup!”

  1. lisa Says:
    November 25th, 2008 at 8:33 am

    That’s pretty unbelievable. I wonder how much power the Corn Refiners Association has in Washington.

  2. Rabbi Rachel Kahn-Troster Says:
    November 25th, 2008 at 8:51 am

    I’ve been trying to find out the answer to that, but it seems like a fair amount. One disturbing piece of news is that the former head of the CRA, Chuck Connor, has been serving as the acting director of the USDA, or at least was during the Farm Bill negotiations. Here’s a background piece about him:

    http://gristmill.grist.org/pri.....omments=no

  3. lisa Says:
    November 25th, 2008 at 10:09 pm

    I read the article, and find it pretty telling that ADM doesn’t even need lobbyists. Let’s hope Obama chooses political figures with different agendas. I just don’t trust these big corporations; it seems clear to me that foods that are closest to their natural state (and/or with the longest histories) are the best ones to eat, despite their sugary nature. Who are doctors who receive CRA literature more likely to side with?

  4. Judith Says:
    November 27th, 2008 at 2:55 pm

    My 6 year old nephew is in the 20th percentile for his weight and his pediatrician strongly encouraged my sister to give him Pediasure - that high calorie and high sugar energy drink with added vitamins for kids. It’s really gross. I can’t even call it food. But my sister, worried that there was something wrong with her son, did what the doctor suggested. In my mind Pediasure is little better for a kid than a McDonald’s shake. I doubt this pediatrician is alone in his poor nutritional advice. I’ve since gently encouraged my sister not to feed him the Pediasure and instead encourage the child to eat more whole foods. He’s not starving. He’s just a naturally slender child. What’s wrong with the 20th percentile when there’s such an epidemic of obesity and diabetes in our youth today?

  5. PinkDevora Says:
    November 28th, 2008 at 11:27 am

    Thank you for the links. This has been an ongoing “discussion” between me and my husband. I want the soda consumption to go way, way down…

    It’s unbelievable how many products have HFCS in them.

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