Leading the Fight against “Corn Sugar”

The result was a Facebook page that Ivan put up, detail­ing what he had found. The Facebook page ended up net­ting 120,000 followers—enough for the New York Times to do an arti­cle on it and invite the Corn Refiners Association to respond. (The page now has nearly 200,000 followers.)

Since that time, Ivan has not ceased his efforts. Top on his list cur­rently is a peti­tion he has posted online to stop the rela­bel­ing of HFCS as “corn sugar”—an issue cur­rently before the FDA. Such a move would mean that unsus­pect­ing shop­pers, inspect­ing prod­uct labels for high-fructose corn syrup, would no longer see the ingre­di­ent listed, although it would still be there under an alias.

Some time ago the FDA approved the name change, but the Sugar Association protested, so the issue was put on hold. “If it weren’t for the Sugar Association step­ping in and say­ing, `Hey, let’s really eval­u­ate this,’ we never would have known about it,” Ivan told Organic Connections. “The FDA had already approved it, and we wouldn’t have been able to tell the dif­fer­ence. The FDA didn’t even send any let­ters out to the media; it was done secretly. The Sugar Association got wind of it and right then they stayed it for the time being.”

Ivan decided not to wait for the FDA’s final deci­sion, which is still pend­ing. He posted an online peti­tion against the rela­bel­ing for peo­ple to sign, which will ulti­mately be sub­mit­ted to First Lady Michelle Obama, the FDA and the HHS (US Department of Human Health Services). It can be found at www.stopcornsugarnow.com.

Ivan has also put up a blog called The Ban of High-Fructose Corn Syrup in the US. Among the research shared by him on the blog, he is now post­ing inter­views he has been con­duct­ing with doc­tors and other professionals.

“Over the last year I’ve been talk­ing with peo­ple and pro­fes­sion­als from all over the world, and then a cou­ple of weeks ago a light bulb went on: I can share this infor­ma­tion with every­body else. So last week I wrote out my first inter­view with Dr. Andrew Siegel from New Jersey con­cern­ing what he thinks about high-fructose corn syrup, and posted it on my blog as a way to put more infor­ma­tion out there to get everybody’s voice heard on the issue. I’m think­ing of doing that once a week—rolling out an inter­view with a new pro­fes­sional, whether it be a doc­tor, a nutri­tion­ist or just an aver­age per­son, regard­ing what their views are on high-fructose corn syrup. The over­all response to last week’s inter­view was phenomenal.”

During the time that Ivan has been involved in the HFCS issue, he has cor­re­sponded with con­cerned con­sumers all over the world. Recently, he real­ized a com­mon thread exists in a lot of the com­mu­ni­ca­tion, which he had not noticed before—and he intends to find out much more about it.

“You’d be sur­prised how many dif­fer­ent e-mails I get from peo­ple from all around the world telling me about their ill­nesses,” Ivan said. “I think there is some­thing else going on that the light hasn’t been shined on yet.

“People are writ­ing from dif­fer­ent places and dif­fer­ent walks of life, but the over­all gen­eral mes­sage is the same. It’s like, `I was hav­ing a scream­ing headache,’ or `I was hav­ing scream­ing pains in my stom­ach,’ or `I just don’t have any energy.’ Then they say, `Once I cut out the one thing, high-fructose corn syrup, six to seven days later I’m feel­ing great again. The only thing I’ve done dif­fer­ently was I cut out this stuff—I didn’t change any­thing from my diet; I didn’t do any­thing dras­tic; I just cut this one prod­uct out. And all of a sud­den now, I’m feel­ing bet­ter and the doc­tor is amazed at how every­thing changed and every­thing got back to nor­mal.’ It’s just this one story told over and over and over again. The com­mon com­plaints are headaches, stom­ach pains and lack of energy.

Click any image above to see a larger version.

“So I assem­bled all this infor­ma­tion together, because I never get rid of my e-mails. I want to obtain per­mis­sion from peo­ple to put these sto­ries up for some­body else to see who’s more famil­iar in this prac­tice, and we can start some type of research going.”

Also in his cor­re­spon­dence, Ivan has run across many peo­ple who say they can’t afford to shop organ­i­cally in order to ensure they avoid ingre­di­ents like high-fructose corn syrup, and shortly he’ll be address­ing that issue as well in his blog.

“Another ques­tion that’s com­ing up is peo­ple want to know how to avoid HFCS,” Ivan related. “People say, `I just can’t afford to go to the gourmet super­mar­kets. What else can I do?’ That brought up a new mis­sion: the poor peo­ple who don’t eat sus­tain­able, local and non-GMO foods because of the cost.

“I tell peo­ple that I don’t have a lot of money, so I want to let them know what I do. For exam­ple, there are some really good farm­ers’ mar­kets out there. That’s how I get through it. I went there on Saturday and spent about eight dol­lars and I got a lot of stuff. Whole Foods is another excel­lent place. When you men­tion `Whole Foods,’ peo­ple get a lit­tle ner­vous and say, `I can’t go in there’; but one of the great things I have found about Whole Foods is they have bulk aisles—they have a bulk spice aisle and a bulk refined grains and oats aisle, which are phe­nom­e­nal. I’ve saved a lot of money in there.”

Ivan has also real­ized that, in get­ting away from processed foods, it’s nec­es­sary to cook. So he will be shar­ing what he has learned along that line as well. “We’re going to have to go back to tra­di­tional meth­ods of just cook­ing from scratch,” said Ivan. “I don’t have a lot of time to cook dur­ing the week, so I make time on Sundays and I spend four hours at my stove. So, on any given Sunday, you can see a bowl of spinach going and squash and var­i­ous other foods. I’m cook­ing every­thing and bag­ging it and putting it into the freezer for the week. When I get home dur­ing the week, I don’t have to worry about going off to the super­mar­ket or doing any­thing else—I just grab a bag of squash, warm it up, and there I go.”

Ivan con­cludes with his phi­los­o­phy of what has kept him moti­vated and mov­ing on his mission.

“I try to change people’s opin­ion of gov­ern­ment, and some of them say, `I like the idea of a peti­tion but it’s never going to work. Big sugar and big corn are always going to take over.’ I just try to reas­sure them that maybe that was the case in the past, but with enough of us, we can change that. Much has changed even since last year; there are a lot of com­pa­nies now that, out of the blue, are sim­ply tak­ing HFCS out of their prod­ucts. So things are hap­pen­ing; the pub­lic are wak­ing up; more shop­pers are look­ing at the labels and not buy­ing it. People call me up and say, `I just wanted to say thank you. You changed my life. I stopped buy­ing this and I feel bet­ter than I ever have.’ Stuff like that makes you feel good.”

Sign Ivan’s peti­tion against the rela­bel­ing of HFCS at www.stopcornsugarnow.com.

Read Ivan’s blog at http://blog.banofhfcs.com.

Access Ivan’s famous Facebook page at www.facebook.com/#!/BanOfHFCS.