Coke, BPA, and the Limits of Green Capitalism

Posted on May 10, 2011 by user6

GRIST– “Coca-Cola goes green,” announced a 2010 Forbes article. Indeed, the beverages giant maintains partnerships with Big Green groups like Conservation International and World Wildlife Fund. It recently even completed its takeover of Honest Tea, an organic bottled-tea company. It would clearly like to be seen as a paragon of “green capitalism” — the idea that doing good and doing well go hand in hand.

Let’s put aside questions over what can possibly be “green” about a business model geared to sucking in huge amounts of drinking water, blasting it with what are probably toxic sweeteners and other dodgy substances, and then packaging it in little aluminum cans and plastic bottles and sending them far and wide, to be chilled (using fossil energy) before consumption.

OK, so within those tight constraints, Coca-Cola says it wants to be a “green company.” So … WTF? Last week, Coca-Cola shareholders voted by a 3-to-1 margin to continue using BPA, a toxic industrial chemical, in the lining of its soft-drink cans.

According to an account in Food Production Daily, a company executive assured shareholders that “if we had any sliver of doubt about the safety of our packaging, we would not continue to use [BPA].” So, we’re supposed to believe that Coke execs have weighed the evidence and found BPA to be safe — and that they will immediately banish it if they decide otherwise.

Sorry, but that’s bullsh*t.

Photo by Flickr user williamtillis

High-Fructose Corn Syrup Getting Rebranded as ‘Corn Sugar’

Posted on September 16, 2010 by abby

LIVE SCIENCE– The good news: Consumption of high-fructose corn syrup is at a 20-year low. The bad news: The folks who make this insidious sweetener aim to rebrand it to boost sales.

High-fructose corn syrup is cheaper than cane sugar and acts as a food preservative, too, so the food industry loves the stuff. But it’s been added to so many foods — yogurt, cereal, bread, drinks and even condiments — that researchers have fingered it as a culprit in the obesity epidemic.

The Corn Refiners Association has in the past marketed high-fructose corn syrup as natural. Our Bad Medicine columnist Christopher Wanjek argues otherwise:

“High-fructose corn syrup could be all-natural if cornstarch happened to fall into a vat of alpha-amylase, soak there for a while, then trickle into another vat of glucoamylase, get strained to remove the Aspergillus fungus likely growing on top, and then find its way into some industrial-grade D-xylose isomerase. This funny coincidence didn’t happen in nature until the 1970s in a lab somewhere in Japan.”

Now the Corn Refiners Association plans to ask the FDA to allow high-fructose corn syrup to be called simple “corn sugar” instead, AP reports. And already the group is advertising it with that name. The adds also claims there’s no difference between corn sugar and cane sugar. Hmm.

Cancer Cells Slurp Up Fructose, US Study Finds

Posted on August 4, 2010 by abby

REUTERS– Pancreatic tumor cells use fructose to divide and proliferate, U.S. researchers said on Monday in a study that challenges the common wisdom that all sugars are the same. Tumor cells fed both glucose and fructose used the two sugars in two different ways, the team at the University of California Los Angeles found.

They said their finding, published in the journal Cancer Research, may help explain other studies that have linked fructose intake with pancreatic cancer, one of the deadliest cancer types.

“These findings show that cancer cells can readily metabolize fructose to increase proliferation,” Dr. Anthony Heaney of UCLA’s Jonsson Cancer Center and colleagues wrote. “They have major significance for cancer patients given dietary refined fructose consumption, and indicate that efforts to reduce refined fructose intake or inhibit fructose-mediated actions may disrupt cancer growth.”

Americans take in large amounts of fructose, mainly in high fructose corn syrup, a mix of fructose and glucose that is used in soft drinks, bread and a range of other foods. Politicians, regulators, health experts and the industry have debated whether high fructose corn syrup and other ingredients have been helping make Americans fatter and less healthy.

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Photo by flickr user GE Healthcare

Study Finds HIgh-Fructose Corn Syrup Contains Mercury

Posted on April 26, 2010 by abby

WASHINGTON POST– Almost half of tested samples of commercial high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) contained mercury, which was also found in nearly a third of 55 popular brand-name food and beverage products where HFCS is the first- or second-highest labeled ingredient, according to two new U.S. studies.

HFCS has replaced sugar as the sweetener in many beverages and foods such as breads, cereals, breakfast bars, lunch meats, yogurts, soups and condiments. On average, Americans consume about 12 teaspoons per day of HFCS, but teens and other high consumers can take in 80 percent more HFCS than average.

“Mercury is toxic in all its forms. Given how much high-fructose corn syrup is consumed by children, it could be a significant additional source of mercury never before considered. We are calling for immediate changes by industry and the [U.S. Food and Drug Administration] to help stop this avoidable mercury contamination of the food supply,” the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy’s Dr. David Wallinga, a co-author of both studies, said in a prepared statement.

In the first study, published in current issue of Environmental Health, researchers found detectable levels of mercury in nine of 20 samples of commercial HFCS.

Continue reading about Study Finds HIgh-Fructose Corn Syrup Contains Mercury.

Photo by flickr user theakshay

More information

The U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances & Disease Registry has more about mercury and health.