Food! Smucker's Jam=HFCS(High Fructose Corn Syrup)

Hello fellow Bloggers and Blog Readers! For my blog this week I will be discussing food. It is undeniable that all of us are avid fans of some sort of food. There is something thing without a second thought makes our tummys grumble. I personally enjoy a lot of different food. Instead of talking about something that would be considered foreign to my readers, I thought I'd talk about a food that finds its way onto our toast and sandwiches. Ask almost any child in the United States if they have eaten a peanut butter and jelly sandwich-they will most likely answer yes. When I was a child, my mother didn't want me to like jelly, as most has tons of sugar. In my PB and J sandwiches she would use strawberry preserves. I in turn grew up thinking I had eaten much healthier because of this. Sadly to my great dismay, strawberry preserves aren't much healthier. The "preserves" part makes it certainly sound more elegant, but instead of tons of actual real sugar, it has high fructose corn syrup or HFCS.

Now that strawberry preserves seem less exciting as even some of the junkiest cereals are filled with HFCS, let us take a closer look at Smucker's Strawberry Preserves to figure out what it is made of and where those ingredients come from.

We already know that HFCS is a major component, but without the other ingredients it would look just like this=

With the help of sstrawberries,  corn syrup(Yes! There are TWO kinds of corn syrup!), sugar, fruit pectin, citric acid we are able to enjoy this on our toast and sandwiches.

I found it very easy to find out the ingredients, but tracking where these ingredients come from was very difficult. The official Smucker's website was not at all useful in responding to my inquiries about where their ingredients come from. On their Q&As part they provided silly information like "Do We Sell Pickles?"(Yep, this is actually on there. Check it out yourself!).

After skimming the web for a while I was able to find out that Smucker's operates in Ohio, but that still didn't tell me where their ingredients come from. Corn syrup appears twice in their ingredients. Since the United States subsidizes corn, I can assume that the corn comes from more a few of our fifty states. In general the United States imports sugar from countries like Colombia, Mexico and Zimbabwe. According to the United States Department of Agriculture 90% of the strawberries imported to the United States come from Mexico. If they are not imported they are probably grown in California(probably by Mexicans. Wow, so original)

Realistically, the strawberries and corn for that matter which go into Smucker's Strawberry Preserves are probably not raised organic(unless the type of Strawberry Preserves doesn't state it is "organic" etc). Smucker's is making a profit and probably doesn't care about how healthy it might be for their consumers. Whether or not the sugar and strawberries are grown by a small farm or a large farm would most likely depend on the price that Smucker's would have to pay. I believe they would opt for the cheapest option.

The workers who raise the sugar and strawberries that are imported probably get paid little for their work. Their strawberries have to be carried across the sea, cleaned and put into little plastic boxes. The transportation isn't good if we want to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and the little plastic boxes just result in more waste. We can safely assume that the workers in the United States are all illegal immigrants and get paid little to nothing for all their labor. 

How healthy is Smucker's Strawberry Preserves?

As I mentioned earlier Strawberry Preserves is jam packed with sugar and two types of corn syrup. Corn syrup is extremely harmful to a person's health if they consume large quantities over a long period of time. HFCS contains mercury like some fish and according to EatingWell.com, "the heavy metal that even in small amounts poses a neurological risk for young children, babies and growing fetuses..". The same article written by Joyce Hendley entitled "What's So Bad About High Fructose Corn Syrup?" states that "[...]Then the Minneapolis-based nonprofit Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) reported that it had found “detectable levels of mercury” in 17 of the 55 HFCS-rich foods it tested last fall, including barbecue sauce and cereal bars".

Why would Smucker's use such a product to sweeten their jams/jellies/preserves if it was so bad? Corn syrup is cheaper than using sugar. The health of their consumers obviously takes the back burner.

This blog post may be depressing because most people do eat jam/jelly/preserves. Even if they don't buy or use Smucker's most companies(unless it is the no HFCS edition) use corn syrup and HFCS. It is very hard to avoid without giving up using up these products. Regardless of what is healthy for us, we do consume things that are bad for our health. If jam/jelly/preserves are really something a person loves, they don't have to give  them up simply because they have a small amount of mercury. We should all chose what we eat that is unhealthy or bad. Instead of giving up it all, we pick our poison. To be effective people need to have control over what they eat and I think this the a bigger problem altogether rather than HFCS consumer.

Anyway, I hope everyone is having a great week! Cheers to food we love!~!