Today I had the pleasure of enjoying a lovely neighborhood restaurant with my clients Amanda and Kiel. As we discussed both business and pleasure, Amanda brought up a new reason to ditch foods made with chemically engineered food substances high fructose corn syrup.

New research published in Environmental Health and conducted in part by a scientist at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy has revealed that high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is contaminated with the toxic heavy metal mercury...

...Mercury is so highly toxic that it causes severe neurological disorders. It can also result in the loss of hair, teeth and nails as well as muscle weakness, loss of kidney function, emotional mood swings and memory impairment...

...The highest level of contamination found in the study (http://www.ehjournal.net/content/8/1/2) was 0.57 micrograms of mercury per gram of HFCS. The EPA says that an average-sized woman should consume no more than 5.5 micrograms per day of mercury, meaning that the average American consumer may be eating five times the upper safety limit of mercury every day due to high-fructose corn syrup consumption if they consume the foods tested in the study.

That's because the average American consumes 12 teaspoons of HFCS every day! So just by eating the standard American diet of processed foods, consumers are right now potentially exposing themselves to exceedingly high levels of mercury that far surpass the safety limits set by the EPA.

My first question to Amanda was, "How in the world does mercury get in the high fructose corn syrup?" Turns out it is due to the processing technique.

One of those processes is a bizarre chemical brew involving the creation of caustic soda by exposing raw materials to pools of electrified mercury in a large vat. Through this process, the caustic soda gets contaminated with mercury, and when corn kernels are exposed to this caustic soda to break them down, that contamination is passed through to the HFCS.

Another toxic chemical, glutaraldehyde, is also used in the production of HFCS. It's so toxic that consuming even a small amount of it can burn a hole in your stomach.

Thanks to WebMD for the list of 17 contaminated products:

• Quaker Oatmeal to Go bars
• Jack Daniel's Barbecue Sauce
• Hershey's Chocolate Syrup
• Kraft Original Barbecue Sauce
• Nutri-Grain Strawberry Cereal Bars
• Manwich Gold Sloppy Joe
• Market Pantry Grape Jelly
• Smucker's Strawberry Jelly
• Pop-Tarts Frosted Blueberry
• Hunt's Tomato Ketchup
• Wish-Bone Western Sweet & Smooth Dressing
• Coca-Cola Classic: no mercury found on a second test
• Yoplait Strawberry Yogurt
• Minute Maid Berry Punch
• Yoo-hoo Chocolate Drink
• Nesquik Chocolate Milk
• Kemps Fat Free Chocolate Milk

With all due respect, if you haven't cut this stuff out of your diet yet, what are you waiting for? Become a food detective and read the ingredients label because food manufacturers don't care about YOU, they only care about their bottom line profit.

Here's a classic reminder that we are what we eat: