Where’s the Beef? All Fast Foods Based on Corn
A. Hope Jahren, a University of Hawaii geography and geophysics professor, went on a shopping spree that started in Los Angeles and ended in Boston, with stops in San Francisco, Denver, Detroit, and Baltimore in between. What did she buy? No fewer than 480 individual menu items from Burger King, McDonald’s, and Wendy’s fast-food restaurants, each of which was freeze dried and shipped off for laboratory analysis.
But what did she really buy, according to lab analysis? Mostly corn. And Americans buy about $100 billion of it, in fast-food form, every year.
When Jahren and her colleagues analyzed the fast-food items at the molecular level, they found corn in all products except 12 burgers purchased at West Coast Burger King stores. The cows that went into those burgers ate some corn but their diets weren’t exclusively corn based.
Not so for 100% of the remaining burgers and for 93% of the chicken sandwiches under atomic scrutiny. Virtually all animals used in fast-food production feed exclusively on a corn-based diet. That corn-based diet carries through to the human consumer, bringing with it obesity and obesity-related medical conditions. Cynthia Sass, a New York City nutritionist, attributes today’s obesity epidemic to the current abundance of cheap food products of inferior nutritional value, such as corn.
The fries may be filled with corn, too, depending where you buy them. All the fries bought at Wendy’s stores tested positive for corn, an indication the fries were cooked in corn oil although official company literature says the fries may be made with other kinds of oil, too. The vegetable oils found in the fries from Burger King and McDonald’s showed no traces of corn.
Although soft drinks were not a part of the Jahren study, high-fructose corn syrup, the most commonly used sweetener in the beverage industry today, is high in calories and supplies no nutrients in return. Many people overlook the caloric significance of the beverages they drink but beverages sweetened by high-fructose corn syrup contribute heavily to the obesity epidemic.
The journal, ‘Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,’ carries full details of the Jahren study in this week’s issue.
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High fructose corn syrup, sugar, and several fruit juices are all nutritionally the same.
High fructose corn syrup has the same number of calories as sugar and is handled similarly by the body.
The American Medical Association in June 2008 helped put to rest misunderstandings about this sweetener and obesity, stating that “high fructose corn syrup does not appear to contribute to obesity more than other caloric sweeteners.”
Many confuse pure “fructose” with “high fructose corn syrup,” a sweetener that never contains fructose alone, but always in combination with a roughly equivalent amount of a second sugar (glucose). Recent studies that have examined pure fructose - often at abnormally high levels - have been inappropriately applied to high fructose corn syrup and have caused significant consumer confusion.
Consumers can see the latest research and learn more about high fructose corn syrup at http://www.HFCSfacts.com and http://www.SweetSurprise.com.
Audrae Erickson
President
Corn Refiners Association