Corn syrup "more deadly than terrorism"; eat maple

Vintage Recipe Thursday is meant to preserve your own original vintage family recipes, or out-of-print, copyright-free recipes from old cookbooks, magazines, newspapers. You're invited! Get the details by clicking to the Vintage Recipe Thursday Homepage. I post recipes from the Household Searchlight Recipe Book, first published in 1931. My 16th printing is from 1943. What will you post?

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The other day we were at the grocery store looking for maple syrup. My husband spotted a pancake syrup marked in large red letters "no high fructose corn syrup." I rejoiced at the thought of pancake syrup being made with real sugar, real honey or real maple. My husband was almost ready to put it in the basket, but being doubting Thomases, we looked at the ingredients.

Well, my hopes where dashed quickly! The very first ingredient listed was "corn syrup"!!! You see it must not have been "high fructose," but it was still CORN SYRUP!!! I can't put in enough exclamation marks. I can't type in any more upper case than upper case! But I'm mad.

I'm mad that these big companies pull the wool over our eyes. They weren't successful with us, but I know they are with so many other people, or they just wouldn't even try it. Here they were, specifically targeting people who DO NOT WANT CORN SYRUP!! And tricking them with technicalities or semantics. This syrup might not have been "high fructose," maybe it was "low fructose" or "medium fructose," or "whatever fructose," but corn syrup is corn syrup.

Corn syrup is a man-engineered product. It may start out as natural corn, but by the time these people are done processing it, manipulating it, it is a chemical, not natural in the least. There is no corn syrup tree out there. According to studies, it makes us, and lab animals too, fat and sick; it causes tumors, sometimes it even kills.

As you can watch and listen to the video below, even the Vice President of the United States, then Senator Joe Biden, tells us that corn syrup is more deadly than terrorist attacks, and that "hundreds of thousands of people die and their lives are shortened because of coal plants, coal-fired plants and because of corn syrup."

The Washington Post, USA Today, Reuters, U.S News and World Report, Fox News and many other news organizations have been reporting all year that studies are finding detectable levels of mercury in corn syrup.

"Mercury is toxic in all its forms. Given how much high-fructose corn syrup is consumed by children, it could be a significant additional source of mercury never before considered. We are calling for immediate changes by industry and the [U.S. Food and Drug Administration] to help stop this avoidable mercury contamination of the food supply," the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy's Dr. David Wallinga, a co-author of two of the studies, said in a prepared statement in January 2009.

So beware of the tricksters who mark their foods in large red letters as having "no high fructose corn syrup," because it DOES have corn syrup, and it is the very first ingredient! They know we are onto the evils of corn syrup, but we will be on to their tricks, too! We are not as stupid as they take us to be. We may have been naive and trusting once upon a time, but we are not stupid, and we do read labels, even the fine print!

To promote natural foods that do grow on trees, or in this case IN trees, I'm offering you a good, old-fashioned maple syrup parfait recipe.

Maple Parfait
4 eggs
2 cups whipping cream
1 cup maple syrup
1/8 teaspoon salt

Beat eggs until yolks and whites are blended. Add salt. Heat syrup to boiling. Pour slowly, stirring constantly, over eggs. Cook over hot water until thick. Cool. Carefully fold in stiffly whipped cream. Fill mold. Pack in ice and salt. Let stand 4 hours. 8 servings.