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Meatza! Meatza!

The same meatza just made with 99/1 turkey breast. This whole thing is 940 calories and 170g of protein.

So last night I made a meatza for the second time. For those of you who’ve not had or heard of a meatza, it’s basically a pizza you make using ground beef for the crust.

I consider myself pretty carnivorous and I love pizza (Pizza and beer are make for the one-two punch to knock me completely off the paleo bandwagon*), but I have to confess: the notion of a meatza just didn’t appeal to me at first blush. Plus, I’d made a few attempts at the almond flour crust pizza and been a bit disappointed. It’s a lot of work to make an almond flour pizza, so when the result consistently disappointed, I just gave up on a low-carb pizza solution.

It was only when a few friends mentioned they had enjoyed meatza that I decided to give it a shot. I knew Richard had made meatza based off a meatza recipe from the Healthy Cooking Coach, so that’s where I scrounged up the basic directions.

Now, making a pizza is as simple as making a crust, adding toppings, and baking it in the oven. With a meatza then, the most complicated part here is making the crust. And it’s also the part that you’ve got to get right to make sure your meat pizza is delicious!

Enter my Italian grandfather’s meatball recipe. My Pop has a fairly famous (within the family anyway) spaghetti recipe for sauce and meatballs. I’m going to skip the sauce part for now because it’s a bit more labor-intensive. In a pinch, you can just use some spaghetti sauce from the store.

Anyway, it’s the meatball recipe that really knocks the meatza crust out of the park, so without further ado, here are the ingredients:

  1. I use a 12×17 rectangular pan
  2. Get a decent sized mixing bowl to mix the meat
  3. Start pre-heating the oven to 450
  4. For ease of mixing into the beef, I go ahead and get all my seasonings out and into a little bowl (this will make more sense in a second):
    • 1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese**
    • 3 tsp salt
    • 1 tsp caraway seeds (this is the magic ingredient in my opinion)
    • 1 tsp oregano
    • 1 tsp garlic salt
    • 1 tsp coarse ground pepper
    • 1 tsp red pepper flakes (optional)
    • 2 lbs. ground beef (80/20 is fine)
  5. Seasonings mixed, put the beef into the mixing bowl, crack into it two eggs and mix beef and eggs first. This is because the runny egg can cause the seasonings to clump together and it just makes mixing a lot messier and less uniform if you don’t mix beef and egg first prior to adding the seasonings. Thus, the need for to pre-mix the seasonings — your hands are all covered in beef at this point, so you just have to pour in the seasonings!
  6. Add seasonings and Parmesan cheese and mix well! (Note: you can also do the Parmesan after the egg/beef pre-seasonings if you want)
  7. Take the mass of mixed beef and slam it onto your pan. BAM!
  8. Flatten it out: you should be able to just about cover a 12×17 pan with the beef
  9. Oven pre-heated, throw it in there for 10 minutes!

At this point, I immediately start pre-cooking certain ingredients that need a little extra attention; in my case, it’s sliced mushrooms and diced green pepper sauteeing in a cast iron skillet with some pasture butter.

Ten minutes up, take the crust out of the oven. Set the oven to Broil (it will take a few minutes to heat to this point).

You’ll now notice the crust has shrunk considerably and there’s a good bit of rendered fat in the pan. Pour the fat out of the pan. Optional step: take a paper towel and wipe up any extraneous beef “stuff” that is exterior to the crust. This is simply because it’s not part of the crust and if you leave it, it could cake to the pan and make clean-up more of a hassle.

Now, you just add your toppings. For me, I added Newman’s Sockerooni spaghetti sauce as a base, then a layer of pepperoni, then a base layer of mozarella cheese. From there, I add sliced green olives, feta cheese, the mushrooms and green peppers, more pepperoni, and top it all off with more cheese.

Broiler heated up, I throw it all back in the oven until the cheese is done. It cooks very fast at this point! Like five minutes is almost too long in our case, so make sure you keep a close eye on your meatza!

Take it out, let it sit for a minute or two, and slice and serve. I find this slices into six solid size pieces — I can eat a half a pizza under the right conditions, but one slice of meatza and I am good to go.

Enjoy!

Oh one more thing: I really like this alternative pizza combination. It is downright delicious and I don’t get that “sigh this isn’t really pizza” sensation at all. I’m not sure it is pizza, really, but it is really good, so who cares!

* Beer, chips, and salsa at Mexican restaurants being right up there, too.

** Were you to make the meatballs, you’d actually use two slices of bread, wet, and torn into small pieces OR 1 cup of plain bread crumbs (you can sub almond flour if you like)

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Are we consuming too much Vitamin C?

http://mangans.blogspot.c…ce-traning.html

Via a Google Reader shared item from Patri Friedman titled Vitamin C Abolishes Endurance Training Effects. The post is just a synopsis of a study that demonstrated that Vitamin C has a negative impact on training for endurance. That we should be training for endurance at all is a topic often derided by various paleo gurus, but the somewhat tangential snippet below is what really caught my eye. It immediately makes me wonder, how much Vitamin C should we be consuming in our diets? Fruits and vegetables are frequently touted as the end-all be-all of nutrition, but most all of those foods have a lot of Vitamin C, which is an antioxident we arguably don’t need much of.

A mere cup of chopped broccoli has 135% of the daily recommendation, which is 90 mg, so 120 mg (Vit C rec. info). And who eats just a cup of broccoli? Further, what about all the other sources we’d get C from in a day?

Who would have thought maybe the colorful fruits and veggies are actually harming our health? Maybe Peter at Hyperlipid has it right. It’s worth further investigation.

Here’s the bit from the Mangans blog:

As noted before on this blog, glutathione is by far the most important antioxidant, and it’s made internally from amino acids. Other antioxidants, as can be seen here, can hamper its production.

Our paleolithic ancestors would probably have been ingesting only small amounts of vitamin C, so any dose larger than say, 100 mg, must be considered quite unnatural. That is not to say that megadoses of vitamin C may not be useful in certain medical conditions, but overall it seems best to avoid that. Many holistic practitioners recommend doses of several grams a day, which could be positively harmful to health. At the least, we can say that athletes should take small doses if any.

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Building and Defusing a Pork Bomb

IMG_3131

The “Bacon Explosion” is likely one of the most cooked (and craved) recipes to hit the Internet in recent months. Having created and eaten a variant of the “Pork Bomb” with my brothers a couple weeks back, I can attest to its tastiness.

The concept between the ‘splosion is simple: you’re taking a couple pounds of ground meat (pork, beef, or a mix) and slow-cooking it on a grill or smoker. Since plopping that much ground meat alone onto a bald grill would be prone to fall apart, you wrap the entire “loaf” with weaved bacon.

Of course, as good as ground meat wrapped in delicious bacon may be, why stop there? To make this “pork-wrapped torpedo” even more delectable, you mix into the meat additional ingredients. This can mean more crispy bacon bits, onions, bell peppers, cheese, seasonings, olives, whatever! BBQ rubs liberally applied to the outside and inside of the bomb are also key.

Our own take involved a 50/50 mix of ground beef and pork. Dry rub and bbq sauce was applied to the interior and exterior of the bomb. “Mix-ins” included green and red peppers, onions, and sharp cheddar cheese. Food and grill preparation took between thirty minutes and an hour. The cooking took around two hours (Rule of thumb is an hour per pound). Have plenty of beer handy for the duration. We served the dish sliced with romaine lettuce and sliced tomatoes. ProNovice-tip: We had to use a few toothpicks to hold our bacon wrap together as our bomb was so big, we needed extra bacon “stitches” to bridge a gap in our weave. Yes, our bomb was high-tech.

The result is a slice-able, bacon-infused, barbecue-seasoned mouth-pleasing monstrosity that you owe it to your taste buds to try.

Rather than add to the volumes of data out there on the nitty gritty details of making your own pork bomb / bacon explosion, I’m just going to provide the relevant links to get you started as well as a few pictures from our BBQ.

Thanks to my brother Nathan (BBQ Zombie) and brother-in-law Michael for their assistance in making the bacon explosion possible. We’ll be taking another crack at cooking one or two of these up this weekend in honor of both these guys turning 30!

IMG_3272
Thanks Nathan!

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Food: African Beef Stew

http://high-fat-nutrition…-beef-stew.html

Just a beef stew recipe that reads tasty (and worth trying in the dutch oven). Via Peter of HyperLipid.

ingredients:
1 lb diced beef
Tin tomatoes.
Medium carrot, sliced.
Medium onion, chopped.
50-75g butter, depends on how fatty the meat is.
50g peanut butter.
Bayleaf.
About 200ml water, to just cover meat.
Salt and pepper to taste.
Fresh root ginger, however much you like.
3 cloves garlic, crushed
Pinch Cayenne pepper
Pinch ground cloves
Tablespoon vinegar or lemon juice.

Place all ingredients in a casserole, bring to boil, stir well, cover, place in oven at gas mark four for 2-3 hours until meat melts in the mouth. Stir every half hour.

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How to Eat Grains

http://wholehealthsource….eat-grains.html

Continuing the recent interest in fermentation (See discussion of Seth Roberts’ posts on Probiotics and Your Immune System and The Staggering Greatness of Homemade Yogurt) comes this post from Stephan at Whole Health Source discussing how to eat grains.

There are two ideas that seem to be repeatedly coming to the surface here:

  • Carbohydrates seem to be better for human consumption when fermented as fermentation reduces anti-nutrients and even introduces some new nutrition in the process.
  • Foods that don’t seem “paleo” at first blush maybe just need some fermentation, which is really just another way of saying they need to be pre-digested prior to eating.

Regarding that second point, our hunter/gatherer ancestors had little food storage tech. This has two implications in my mind:

  • Food is consumed fresh if at all possible, to the point of gorging. Our bodies have an amazing ability to store excess carbohydrate consumption efficiently as fat.
  • Food found but not readily consumed rots or ferments. Our bodies do well with this (Evolutionary luck or design?) by receiving immune system boosts from the introduction of bacteria, reducing toxins via fermentation and maximizing nutrient absorption.

Anyway, here is Stephan:

The second factor that’s often overlooked is food preparation techniques. These tribes did not eat their grains and legumes haphazardly! This is a factor that was overlooked by Dr. Price himself, but has been emphasized by Sally Fallon. Healthy grain-based African cultures typically soaked, ground and fermented their grains before cooking, creating a sour porridge that’s nutritionally superior to unfermented grains. The bran was removed from corn and millet during processing, if possible. Legumes were always soaked prior to cooking.

These traditional food processing techniques have a very important effect on grains and legumes that brings them closer in line with the “paleolithic” foods our bodies are designed to digest. They reduce or eliminate toxins such as lectins and tannins, greatly reduce anti-nutrients such as phytic acid and protease inhibitors, and improve vitamin content and amino acid profile. Fermentation is particularly effective in this regard. One has to wonder how long it took the first agriculturalists to discover fermentation, and whether poor food preparation techniques or the exclusion of animal foods could account for their poor health.

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A better way to die?

http://www.proteinpower.c…ter-way-to-die/

Michael Eades talks about the implications of humans eating animals with regards to:

  • The symbiotic relationship created therein (i.e. there are more cows because humans like eating them – similar to trees and paper)
  • Relativistic comparisons between the humane harvesting of animals via slaughterhouses and the normal way millions of animals die every day in the wild — i.e. natural causes like a hawk tearing the lung of a crow and the crow dying of asphyxiation or lions causing an elephant to suffocate, etc.
  • Cortisol’s (stress hormone) meat-ruining impact incentivizing slaughterhouses to be humane, not stressing out the animals.

It’s a thought-provoking, well-written piece. The book referenced is one I should probably add to my wish list.

Here’s a snippet:

When animals (ourselves included) are stressed, they release cortisol, a hormone that looms large in the fight or flight response. This cortisol can be measured and used as an indicator of stress. Cattle are minimally tamed animals. They are by nature skittish. They don’t take well to being handled and, in fact, don’t really like to have people around. Dr. Grandin has taken cortisol samples from animals just standing around the farm with people within view and discovered that they have a slightly elevated cortisol levels. When she tests animals in properly designed slaughterhouses right as they reach the final station, she finds that they have similar cortisol levels as animals standing in the barnyard with humans present. In other words, a little stress, but not a lot.

I can pretty much assure anyone that these animals meet their deaths in today’s slaughterhouses with orders of magnitude less stress than they would were they living in the wild and being preyed upon by large carnivores. In fact, had they been living in the wild, they wouldn’t exist today. They would have been relegated to the long list of animals that have become extinct.

Let’s consider cattle. Cows are large, fairly placid, relatively slow, and exceptionally stupid. They are also uncommonly good to eat. All these facts taken together make it clear why cattle are still with us. (It also reminds me of a great and very true statement I heard once but can’t remember where: ‘If you want to preserve the American bald eagle, all you’ve got to do is make ‘em good to eat, and before long, you’ll be overrun with them.’) And not just a few specimens in zoos, but by the millions roaming pastures the world over. Cattle, unlike other wild animals, allowed themselves to be domesticated. Humans complied and domesticated them. A covenant arose between humans and cattle in which we provided for them and they for us. We kept them safe and allowed them to breed and survive as a species; they provided us with meat in return. It’s been a great bargain for all sides. Although any individual steer trudging off to slaughter may not see it this way, the covenant has been a godsend for the breed, which has grown and prospered. There is a wonderful book titled The Covenant of the Wild detailing this animal-man symbiotic relationship that should be on everyone’s bookshelf, especially anyone’s who doesn’t feel right about eating meat or who is being relentlessly hounded by vegetarian friends or family. Although it’s never pleasant to think of animals being put to death so that we can eat them, it is reassuring to know that it is done as stresslessly as possible. If done right, with almost no stress at all. If, however, the PETA folks had their way, these animals would be turned away from the slaughterhouse doors and sent to live out their days peacefully on lush pastures somewhere.

If this vegan fantasy came to pass, what would happen to these cattle? Would their deaths be more or less stressful than at the hands of their human handlers? You probably know the answer, but let’s take a look. And, remember, not for the squeamish.

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Probiotics and Your Immune System

http://www.blog.sethrober…-immune-system/

More from Seth Roberts on fermentation and bacteria, specifically with regards to probiotics:

My take is that our immune systems need a steady stream of foreign pathogens (e.g., bacteria) and pieces of pathogens (e.g., bacterial cell walls) to stay “awake”;. When your immune system is working properly you fight off all sorts of bacteria and viruses without noticing. When your immune system isn’t working properly it overreacts (allergies) and takes too long to react (infectious diseases). Weston Price found twelve communities eating traditional diets whose health was excellent. Their diets varied tremendously but one thing they had in common was daily consumption of fermented foods, including cheese, kefir, sauerkraut, and fermented fish. This supports Amy’s story right down to the dosage. If you don’t eat fermented foods, you might use hookworms, which excrete a steady stream of foreign substances into the blood. (Thanks, Tom.) Hookworms definitely reduce allergy symptoms; I don’t think anyone has asked if they reduce colds and other infections.

The hygiene hypothesis.

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The Staggering Greatness of Homemade Yogurt

http://www.blog.sethrober…omemade-yogurt/

I’m not sure why I waited so long to subscribe to Seth Roberts, self-experimenter extraordinaire and creator of the Shangri-La Diet, but after seeing enough shared items of his (H/T Patri Friedman), I finally did. And so far, I’m thoroughly enjoying his typical thought-provoking blog posts.

Recently, he’s been discussing how ice chewing is a sign of iron deficiency. Why is there a relationship here? Ice crushing is similar to bone-crushing, and bone marrow is high in iron. In other words, we are evolutionarily programmed to want to chew bones when we are iron deficient. More from Seth on that topic.

Of course, chewing ice provides us with no iron! That’s a problem.

Similarly, we may have desire for certain tastes out of a need for a certain type of nutrition. Seth has been wondering if the desire for taste is really a manifestation of a need for bacteria, as fermented foods tend to be very nutritious thanks to the bacteria and the neutralization of the bad stuff in the foods fermented (I.e. fermented soy reduces the toxin phytate. Dairy fermentation reduces lactose content.).

So where does that leave Seth? Super-fermented (read: sour!), sour yogurt of course!

I’m not ready to try this one out as it sounds kinda gross and I’m just not into yogurt at this point. The non-photogenic comment by Seth at the end makes it not so appealing, too.

However, I’m saving this down for posterity:

I had made yogurt dozens of times. This time, however, I wanted to get as much bacteria as possible so I incubated it about 24 hours instead of about 6 hours. It came out far more sour (due to lactic acid) than ever before. But it wasn’t just really sour (like vinegar); it also had complexity of flavor, creaminess, and a pleasant consistency. It was more sour (tart and tangy are the conventional terms) than any yogurt I’ve ever had. I couldn’t eat a bowl of it; I had to eat it with other food. This may be why commercial yogurt is mild: So you will/can eat more of it at one time.

The yogurt I made is essentially a condiment, although it can be mixed with fruit. It improves almost anything: soup, meat, fish, fruit, string beans, scrambled eggs. (Because almost nothing we eat is sour and almost nothing we eat is creamy.) It is better than other common condiments, such as mustard and chutney, because of its creaminess. It is also far cheaper than other condiments. A small bottle of mustard might cost $3. The same volume of homemade yogurt would cost about 10 cents. (You might need twice or three times as much yogurt to get the same effect.) It is far easier to make than other condiments. And, above all, I suspect it is infinitely better for your health. Mustard has few bacteria. If you complexify and sour your food with mustard, you are essentially chewing ice.

…

Recipe. I took a gallon of whole milk, mixed it with 2 cups of powdered milk, heated it at about 200 degrees F. for 10-20 minutes (I’m unsure if this step is necessary), cooled it down to 130 degrees F., added 1/2 cup of starter (from other yogurt), and then incubated it in my oven at about 110 degrees F. for about a day. I divided the mixture into four glass containers. Although the lowest possible setting on the oven is “WARM”, which was too hot, the thermostat actually works at lower temperatures. I set it below WARM and used a room thermometer to adjust the setting so that the temperature was about 110 degrees. (The photo above is not mine, incidentally. My yogurt is no longer photogenic.)

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Snack Attack? Try Avocado and Sunflower Seeds.

avocado + sunflower seeds is so tasty!The picture to the right practically speaks for itself — a healthy, mouth-watering snack that is so delicious you could eat it for dessert: simply half an avocado filled with shelled sunflower seeds.

Preparation takes about 90 seconds. Take an avocado and slice it in half. Twist to separate the halves. Extract the pit (Carefully inject the knife tip into the pit and just twist). Take one half in hand and slice a grid into it. Finally, take shelled sunflower seeds (preferably salted) and pour them into the open “hole” left by the pit. Grab a spoon and enjoy!

The only variation to this snack I’ve seen (or tried) is to add a bit of hot sauce on top. I prefer it plain. It is hard to beat avocado and sunflower seeds — a tasty treat for its salty, crunchy, and creamy texture, satisfying to the last spoonful.

Below is listed some macro-nutritional information for the combo. I had to calculate this by cobbling together data from nutritiondata.com and calorieking.com (Assumes half an avocado and a tablespoon of sunflower seeds). As calculated, the macro-nutrient profile for this snack is:

  • 160 calories
  • 14.5 grams of fat
  • 8 grams of carbohydrates
  • 5.5 grams of dietary fiber
  • 3 grams of protein

The combination is fat-laden and low in carbohydrates if not a bit light on protein. The profile makes it a solid snack for insulin control. One note: most of the fat is of the polyunsaturated, omega-6 variety; however, if you’re eating a healthy diet*, there is little be concerned about in eating what essentially no more than a fruit and some seeds.

Avocado half with shelled sunflower seedsAdditionally, the avocado/sunflower seed combo is vitamin and mineral dense, packing a load of vitamins E, C, K, B6, as well as healthy doses of potassium, calcium, iron, zinc, copper, magnesium, selenium, and manganese (among other nutrients). How can you go wrong?

Try it out and let me know what you think!

Extra credit goes to the first person to try this with crispy bacon crumbles instead of shelled sunflower seeds. I take no blame if bacon mixes poorly with avocado as I have yet to try this variant out, but if it works, I’ll take all the glory. My gut tells me it would be awesome, but bacon and I go way back to my toddler years. So the story goes, I first encountered a cast iron skillet sans parental supervision, replete with cooled bacon grease when I was around three years old. I promptly slathered the grease all over my face, forever burning (figuratively) the bacon-y goodness into my brain.

The rest is history. I love bacon.

*My definition of a healthy diet is staying away from frankenfoods, sugary junk, vegetable oils and breads. To balance out our modern omega-6 heavy foods, I supplement with a bit of omega-3 rich fish oil. More on that subject here.

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HFCS and Mercury, Food Processing Mysteries and Not Worrying About It

Just read an article discussing a recent study that found an association between mercury and high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). HFCS, which is chemically just a smidge different than your run-of-the-mill table sugar, has been much-maligned in recent days being characterized as the reason Americans have such poor health. To combat this image, the corn industry has been raining down propaganda in the form of asinine commercials that browbeat apparently clueless HFCS-naysaying nincompoops by reinforcing that HFCS, like regular sugar, is natural (it’s made from corn!) and “fine in moderation” (Examples here and here). This HFCS propaganda has humorously spawned a number of youtube spoofs (See here, here and here). God bless the internet.

I won’t delve into this debate other than to say that sugar, HFCS, pure glucose, pure fructose or just sucrose, all have similar, blood-sugar and insulin-spiking effects, which may have drug-like consequences for the human body, and only offer raw energy (But no other nutrients). And one more thought: the appeal that “everything is okay in moderation” is little more than a meaningless justification for behavior, which due to its vague effectiveness at silencing criticism, actually leaves an otherwise meaningful debate worse off than before the “appeal to moderation” is made.

Back to the article. Here’s the gist of the study:

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

In the second study, the agriculture group found that nearly one in three of 55 brand-name foods contained mercury. The chemical was most common in HFCS-containing dairy products, dressings and condiments.

The use of mercury-contaminated caustic soda in the production of HFCS is common. The contamination occurs when mercury cells are used to produce caustic soda.

The last two sentences are worth reading twice.

Caustic soda (Sodium hydroxide) is a chemical base (OH) used to effect various chemical reactions (often used in paper/textile industries). I don’t know the exact use of caustic to create HFCS from corn, but suffice to say that whatever magic is used requires a chemical base as an intermediate. Caustic soda is most commonly formed as a by-product of chlorine extraction from brine (salt water). There are various ways to separate the Chlorine (Cl) from brine, which leaves behind the NaOH, but one process of chlorine/caustic production involves using mercury cells (Notably, the word on the street is that mercury cell chlorine/caustic production technology is slowly being phased out). Apparently, some of this mercury is leaking into the HFCS, and thereby leaking into any foods that contain HFCS. Yikes.

However, all of the above is more than you need to know because the big takeaway is fairly elementary: HFCS is produced by man. It aint natural (appeal to nature)! HFCS has to be created via any number of chemical processes, one of which requires caustic soda, a chemical that may be contaminated with mercury, which may pass on to the HFCS. It’s complicated.

Cane and beet sugar require processing, too, though the processing seems less complicated and doesn’t require caustic soda (Though it does require chemical enzymes!).

So what does this mean and what should we do about it? Is HFCS the evil sweetener health-advocates love to hate? It certainly gets an extra strike against it for the mercury. Is cane/beet sugar better? Probably. Really, these questions are detractors from the bigger reality, which is twofold. The first is obvious: sugar is unhealthy (no matter the specific form). The second is that the production methods used to create processed foods can introduce harmful mystery ingredients. In short, processed foods are not natural.

Yes, the “natural” criticism is a tautology and a non sequitur. Processed foods aren’t inherently unhealthy and can often times be quite good for you (Coconut oil, red wine, extra virgin olive oil, vitamins). It would be silly to construct a diet that insists on totally abstaining from processed foods. When you get right down to it, even raw honey is processed by bees. Nutrition is much too complex for bright-line rules.

But that doesn’t stop us from creating them. As a rule-of-thumb, the farther a food gets from a virgin state, the more exposure it has to being modified in ways we don’t understand and can’t expect to know. Rather than spend countless hours getting comfortable with each and every processed food item and ingredient (And the processing these ingredients underwent ad infinitum), I can simply follow food preferences that minimize my exposure to the unknown.

In theory, by deferring to “natural” foods over produced foods, I should get so many nutrients and health-benefits from consuming nutrient-dense meats, fruits and vegetables that my body will be keyed to overcome whatever other junk manages to sneak into my diet (Chocolate, coffee, ice cream — little vices).

In practice, to the extent that it’s reasonable to do so, I already avoid HFCS and sugar. I do this by enjoying more natural, tasty and self-prepared meals over processed alternatives. Should I worry about the mercury that sneaks into the store-bought ice cream via the ubiquitous additive, high fructose corn syrup? Naah. If you maximize your health in simple ways, you get the by-product of minimizing the impact of the unknown — all without worrying about the nitty gritty details! So the big takeaway of this study? Stop worrying about HFCS and start preferring better, less processed foods! The rest will take care of itself.

Update 2:24 PM 1/28/09: Not surprisingly, the Corn Refiners Association (CRA) has released a statement to refute the above-cited study on mercury in HFCS. Here’s their side and a snippet:

?This study appears to be based on outdated information of dubious significance. Our industry has used mercury-free versions of the two re-agents mentioned in the study, hydrochloric acid and caustic soda, for several years. These mercury-free re-agents perform important functions, including adjusting pH balances,? stated Audrae Erickson, President, Corn Refiners Association. ?For more than 150 years, corn wet millers have been perfecting the process of refining corn to make safe ingredients for the American food supply.?

The CRA is their own worst enemy here. First off, “outdated information of dubious significance” is a pretty strong statement that is no way backed up by the rest of their press release. The study cited above used samples from 2005, which is recent enough for me to consider relevant.

I also found it odd to read how the CRA speaks for all corn refiners in saying “[o]ur industry has used mercury-free versions.” How do they know that? Do they strictly enforce that all corn refiners only buy caustic soda, a globally-produced commodity chemical, from non-mercury-cell producers? We aren’t told. What we are told is that the FDA has approved HFCS and that it uses re-agents for refining and refining has been going on for 150 years. Breath a sigh of relief!

I updated this post to include the CRA response to point out that there are powers that are out actively talking their books — that includes both the HFCS-cheerleaders and the anti-HFCS activists. Thankfully, us enlightened folk can rise above their lunacy.