Posted on 05/04/2006 5:56:26 AM PDT by polymuser
A Boston Legal episode had a case against a snack food manufacturer using high fructose corn syrup, claiming it caused obesity and diabetes in a client. OK, it's entertainment. But with a significant seed of truth in it. Corn seed.
Corn products now saturate the American diet: as a dinner vegetable; as the primary ingredient in breakfast cereals and many snack foods; as the primary sweetener in beverages, candies, snacks and processed foods; as the bulk whitener/sugar/starch in coffee creamers and powdered infant formulas; as the oil in many foods and the oil many foods are cooked in; as a starch and/or flour in many food products.
Corn is a seed. As such, it's a powerhouse of nature. Do you suppose if some other seed, say sunflower, was being ingested almost continuously by the majority of people as a large part of their intake, that maybe we'd see some health issues result? Some physiological reactions to overexposure/saturation? I suspect so. And now, I understand much of our corn is genetically engineered, adding another biolgical issue to corn's consumption and effects.
We're seeing significantly increasing instances of ADD/ADHD, obesity and diabetes in our society. I strongly suspect if the increase in corn product consumption could be compared to the growth of these maladies since the mid-1900's, we'd see parallel trends. But, I have found no such research as of yet.
You can search various word mixes to find a lot of assorted information (corn allergy add adhd obesity diabetes), but no historical comparison of all of them with an eye for a trend. I'd sure be interested to see what it showed.
If you are the parent of a child with behavioral issues, you may really, really benefit from visiting a non-traditional allergist to test for food allergies. Be warned, though: if it's a food allergy, weaning them off the culprit food(s) will be a battle -- we crave food we're allergic to. But wouldn't it be worth it, to have a well behaved child without drugging them daily? And how about a slimmer child who's not headed toward early-onset diabetes, as well?
Bummer.
The significant seed of this "truth" is corn? I thought for sure it would be the overconsumption of calories, especially from carbohydrates. Of course, that would invoke personal responsibility instead of demonizing a food ingredient that most people have no clue about.
I suspect so. And now, I understand much of our corn is genetically engineered, adding another biological issue to corn's consumption and effects.
It's only an issue for those who have no knowledge of science and want to believe what they're being told by the clueless.
We're seeing significantly increasing instances of ADD/ADHD, obesity and diabetes in our society. I strongly suspect if the increase in corn product consumption could be compared to the growth of these maladies since the mid-1900's, we'd see parallel trends. But, I have found no such research as of yet.
That's because no cause-effect exists. There is no existing and legitimate research showing corn (corn syrup) causes any of the maladies you list above.
And how about a slimmer child who's not headed toward early-onset diabetes, as well?
Achieving this has nothing to do with corn products and everything to do with eating right, not consuming more than the body requires and avoiding a sedentary lifestyle. You're trying very hard here to blame obesity, diabetes, behavioral problems and more on something other than the cause.
...demonizing a food ingredient...
A food ingredient that is, as noted by others here and obvious if you read lablels, saturating the American diet. From birth for many.
...a food ingredient that most people have no clue about.
Agreed.
That's because no cause-effect exists.
Your opinion and you're most welcome to it. I heartily disagee. I've closely witnessed ADHD diminish when corn was removed. And I've seen it also in other families after the same diet change.
...want to believe what they're being told by the clueless.
Do you know that a particular GE food used in a high percentage of the American diet poses no biological issues? Can I borrow your crystal ball, please?
I wholeheartedly agree with you that poor dietary self/parental control and a sedentary lifestyle is a national problem that needs change. However, I think most reasonable people could conclude that a single seed food saturating a society's diet, in various and highly processed forms, from cradle on, might, maybe, just possibly cause various adverse physiological reactions.
Might you be part of a farm family, Mase?
We need to eat these "Big Corn" companies for lunch.
If you're talking about corn in general then I cannot accurately answer the question. If you're talking about HFCs then I can say with certainty that the per-capita consumption of this product has been declining since 1999. However, I believe only in what can be proven. I've seen nothing legitimate that proves corn is in any way responsible for any of the afflictions you note.
I've closely witnessed ADHD diminish when corn was removed. And I've seen it also in other families after the same diet change.
ADHD is the most over diagnosed disease in history. However, corn is one of the big eight allergens so maybe it's more than just empirical. You'd think there would be some legitimate studies by now proving this as a cause if one existed. I've seen too many "officials" diagnose boys just being boys as suffering from ADHD. Blaming it on corn at this point is just as spurious.
Do you know that a particular GE food used in a high percentage of the American diet poses no biological issues?
Can you prove that they do? I didn't think so. The FDA is an organization that is all about covering its butt and not making mistakes. They are overcautious to a fault. Do you have the knowledge, education and experience to refute their research?
However, I think most reasonable people could conclude that a single seed food saturating a society's diet, in various and highly processed forms, from cradle on, might, maybe, just possibly cause various adverse physiological reactions
To be reasonable then I'd have to believe your premise that corn is saturating our society. I don't. I suspect that's an easy claim to make but one that is much harder to prove.
Might you be part of a farm family
Hardly. That would require far more work then I'm willing to undertake. I really don't have a dog in this at all except to make an attempt to answer the many claims that get made here that have absolutely no basis in scientific fact. It's what can be proven that really matters. Everything else is just meaningless speculation.
More than likely, it is the chemical reactions that occur when our idiot foodmakers put in unnecessary and unhealthful things in our food supply to make more $$$$...
http://www.card.iastate.edu/iowa_ag_review/winter_05/article5.aspx
"Consumption of high-fructose corn syrup in beverages may play a role in the epidemic of obesity"
http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/79/4/537
"Researchers are beginning to sound the alarm on HFCS. "There's no question that the rise in HFCS consumption has paralleled a rise in both obesity and diabetes," says physician Gross, who authored the study linking HFCS to diabetes.""
http://www.prevention.com/article/0,5778,s1-3-58-135-4835-1-P,00.html
"“Some of these studies demonstrated significant improvement in the behavior of children when their diets were changed, or deterioration in their behavior when they were given food dyes or other offending foods,” says Eugene Arnold, professor emeritus of psychiatry at Ohio State University. But in other studies, the improvements were small, and in a few there were none." (But there were improvements in many.)
http://www.cspinet.org/nah/3_00/diet_behavior.html
It appears that a lot of time and energy have been devoted to diet and behavior, and anecdotal stories. Maybe there's something real in this?
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=%22diet+and+behavior%22&btnG=Search
From Beer & Food: An American History, by Bob Skilnik
Since the 1860s, American brewers had been experimenting with the addition of yellow corn meal in their beers. The logic of adding a grain that was cheap and abundant was evident. The results, however, had proven unsatisfactory as the level of sugary extract that was supposed to be achieved in the mash proved too low, and they resultant beer had a peculiar “corny” and bitter taste to it. Similar experiments with rice proved just as abysmal.
In the next few decades, further experimentation with adding starchy adjuncts to the malt grain bill showed that the use of white corn meal and the removal of the grain’s husk and germ corrected some of the earlier brewing problems with their beers, including the bitterness, most likely from tannins in the husks and germ.
In 1881, Doctor John E. Siebel of Chicago found that by boiling the corn meal in a separate vessel with a small amount of malted barley and then adding it to the larger mash tun of cracked malt and hot water, it was possible to achieve a high yield of extract from the entire mash. After husking and degerminating rice and subjecting it to a hard boil with the addition of a small amount of malt, similar results were achieved. This additional step in the brewing process meant the installation of more equipment in the brewery. Siebel and others, however, experimented with taking “shelled, dis-oiled and ground corn grits” and pressing it through heated rollers while steam was applied to the product. The result was white corn flakes that could go directly into the mash, by-passing the need for a cereal pre-cooker. Competing brands of flaked corn for brewers with names like “cerealine” and “maizone” made their appearances shortly thereafter, somewhere around 1883.
In 1891, a new process of creating corn flakes without steam was introduced in Detroit, the flaked cereal known as “frumentum,” pure white and as thin as tissue paper. It’s interesting to note that the Kellogg® Company’s history claims the accidental discovery of flaked cereal made from wheat by brothers Doctor John Harvey Kellogg and his brother Will in 1894 in Battle Creek, Michigan. In 1898, younger brother Will claimed credit for inventing the toasted corn flake, later flavoring the corn cereal with malt to distinguish it from competitors. The addition of malt in contemporary cereal products is still widespread.
The addition of a starchy adjunct to the brewer’s all-malt grain bill diluted the high soluble nitrogen content of the malted barley and produced a beer as clear as the finest Bohemian pilsners. It didn’t however, lower the cost of production. The preprocessing of corn grits or rice required additional brewing equipment while the processed flakes had a price far beyond corn grits. Corn and rice didn’t make American beer cheaper; it made it clearer and lighter in character.
John Winthrop, Jr. from the old Massachusetts colony must have been looking down and smiling. It took 200 years, but Indian maize—and rice, the old cash crop of the colonial Carolinas—had finally made their way into the commercial brewing of beer in the United States. It didn’t seem to matter, however, to American beer drinkers. In 1889, the per capita (every man, woman, and child) consumption of beer stood at 50.9 quarts.
That's grrrrrrrreat!
Table 1 shows the radical changes that have occurred over time in the level and composition of U.S. sweetener consumption."
Let's look at these radical changes on a chart from the USDA:
HFCS Replaced Sugar Nearly One-For-One - 1970-2004
As you can see, the use HFCS has not changed the sweetener mix in the country's diet.
Consumption of high-fructose corn syrup in beverages may play a role in the epidemic of obesity"
These researchers like to use the word epidemic at every opportunity. It's a good word for stirring up emotions and getting people to demand the government research this very important issue. Of course, if they weren't using HFCS, they'd be using sucrose in their beverages, and there would be no difference in the rates of obesity and diabetes since both are made up of the same ingredients in almost identical proportions. Once again, HFCS isn't the cause of obesity. It's the overconsumption of calories and a sedentary lifestyle that is.
Researchers are beginning to sound the alarm on HFCS
And this alarm is winning them all kinds of research grants. I hope they are sounding the alarm about starch, sucrose and lactose as well, since they're all converted to glucose by the body and stored as fat if the body has more if it than is required.
says physician Gross, who authored the study linking HFCS to diabetes.""
Did the good doctor also happen to link the overconsumption of calories with obesity and diabetes? You see, HFCS is used mostly as a less expensive replacement for sucrose. Where there was once sucrose (or would be sucrose) there is now HFCS. HFCS in soft drinks is made up of 55% fructose and 45% glucose. Sucrose is made up of 50% fructose and 50% glucose. Fructose is sweeter than glucose and HFCS is a little sweeter than sucrose, so manufacturers can (and do) use less of it to achieve the same level of sweetness as sucrose. In the end, consuming a soda is giving you essentially the same amount of the same ingredients whether you use sucrose or HFCS. The caloric composition (4 calories per gram) and the metabolic process of HFCS and sucrose are identical. If you're going to blame HFCS, you have to blame sucrose and every other carbohydrate.
Some of these studies demonstrated significant improvement in the behavior of children when their diets were changed, or deterioration in their behavior when they were given food dyes or other offending foods
Lots of suggestions of correlations but nothing in the way of proof. If people see behavioral improvements by altering diets then more power to them. Be aware though, that most scientific research today is done to find research money. The competition for funding is fierce and the pressure to publish or perish is just as intense. This causes people to do some very questionable things to achieve their desired results. That's why so many of these studies result in findings that are suggestive but rarely serve to isolate the cause. Most research today is run by charlatans and is BS. It's become nothing more than a money grab and when I take the time to carefully review most of this reaearch into food ingredients, I find it rife with faulty methodology and tests that have no relevance to real world situations. JMHO.
Maybe there's something real in this?
Most researchers hope you believe this so they can win more grants. Public opinion and fear drives a great deal of the funding for this research. That's not to say there isn't legitimate research being done out there that finds the causes of disease and methods for treatment. Maybe there is something to this. However, I'll be very surprised if the causes are food related.
From the USDA/ERS 2003 - Annual U.S. per capita sweetener consumption comparisons:
1959: 108 lb. total from 97 lb. cane & beet sugars + 11 lb. corn sweeteners
2000: 151 lb. total from 66 lb. cane & beet sugars + 85 lb. corn sweeteners
Some data for all to consider. Thanks for engaging. Gotta go.
If not, I'll copy some of the key points below:
Such disputes are likely to become more common in academia, especially at schools that put a premium on research with the potential for licensing revenue and outside funding.
Many schools are in the midst of building booms. They aim to finance their growth partly by pushing scientists to report their findings in detail and to generate patents, contracts with industry and federal grants. One example is the University of Pittsburgh, which has mounted an aggressive effort to join the top ranks of NIH grant recipients, reaching No. 9 in fiscal 2004 with $360.6 million in awards. Last fall, Pitt scientists began moving into a new $205 million biomedical tower, whose operations and staffing are expected to be partly financed by NIH grants.
The pressure from the top comes at a time when federal grants from NIH are getting harder to obtain. Applications are way up, but funding, after doubling between 1998 and 2003, has flattened.
"This is driving a lot of people literally to distraction, this coming up with funds to continue your survivability," says Donald Stein, a former dean at Rutgers and Emory universities and currently a professor of medicine at Emory, who edited a 2004 book on the commercialization of research universities.
At the National Cancer Institute, Dr. Pettit's longtime source of funding, officials say that the success rate of applications has plummeted, from more than 20% during the years of the doubling to 16% in 2005 and just 11% this year."
This entire issue is causing otherwise good scientists to manipulate their data to show the desired results. Research to learn the truth isn't important anymore. It's all about creating enough alarm to generate the necessary attention to win the competition for those precious grant dollars.
Buy "Passover" Coke. Near Passover, look in the supermarket for Coke with a yellow cap that ALSO has Hebrew letters printed on it ("kosher for Passover"). This is made with sugar, not corn syrup.
Thanks for the tip.
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