Well, it turns out that the anti-high fructose corn syrup crusaders had something to fear all along. Not just rotting teeth or hyperactivity, but evidently mercury in their children’s Frosted Flakes and Fruit Gushers, too. As discussed in today’s Huffington Post, this news isn’t a recent discovery: FDA has known about this mercury, which is left as a residue from the production of caustic soda, since 2005.

The initial study of this, published in the journal Environmental Health, outed high fructose corn syrup as a mercury containing substance. Other studies have confirmed the findings. But the Huff Post put the real ethical and policy questions best:

“So the question is, what will the FDA do with this new found information? Dufault urges the creation of a mercury surveillance program, that monitors foods besides fish, along with additional public health evaluation of the exposure to mercury through HFCS. But can we really keep avoiding the deeper problem, that HFCS, as a product of the human imagination, could possibly be a failed experiment? For the sake of our health, it might be time for the government to finally intervene.”

In the meantime, stay away from the HFCS laden foods. Eat an apple. Give your kids a banana instead.

Summer Johnson, PhD