What’s sad about the list of brands posted in this very comprehensive report by the Health Observatory, is that I confidently fed my family many of these products through the years. Indeed, my husband is still an avid Coca-Cola Classic fan and I don’t know how I’m going to get him to quit smoking and quit drinking Coke too!

Here’s the list of brands:

7-Up Beverage
A & W Root Beer Beverage
Aunt Jemima Original Syrup Syrup
Campbell’s Tomato Soup Soup
Coca-Cola Classic Beverage
Dr. Pepper Beverage
Fanta Orange Beverage
Hawaiian Punch Fruit Juicy Red Beverage
Heinz Hotdog Relish Condiment
Heinz Tomato Ketchup Condiment
Hershey’s Caramel Syrup Syrup
Hershey’s Chocolate Syrup Syrup
Hershey’s Strawberry Syrup Syrup
Hi-C Wild Cherry Beverage
Hunt’s Tomato Ketchup Condiment
Hy-Top Syrup Syrup
Jack Daniel’s Barbecue Sauce (Heinz) Condiment
Jell-O Strawberry Snack
Kemps Fat Free Chocolate Milk Dairy
Kool-Aid Bursts Tropical Punch Beverage
Kool-Aid Cherry Jammers Beverage
Kraft Original Barbecue Sauce Condiment
Land O’ Lakes Chocolate Milk Dairy
Lipton Green Tea Beverage
Manwich Bold Sloppy Joe Entrée
Market Pantry Applesauce Snack
Market Pantry Cranberry Sauce Condiment
Market Pantry Grape Jelly Jelly
Market Pantry Ice Pops Dessert
Market Pantry Thousand Island Dressing Dressing
Market Pantry Tomato Soup Soup
Minute Maid Berry Punch Beverage
Mott’s Applesauce Snack
Mrs. Butterworth Original Syrup Syrup
Nesquik Chocolate Milk Dairy
Nesquik Strawberry Milk Dairy
NOS High Performance Energy Drink Beverage
Nutri-Grain Strawberry Cereal Bars Snack
Ocean Spray Cranberry Sauce Condiment
Pepsi Beverage
Pop-Tarts Frosted Blueberry Snack
Powerade Orange Beverage
Quaker Oatmeal to Go Snack
Smucker’s Strawberry Jelly Jelly
Smucker’s Strawberry Syrup Syrup
Snapple Peach Iced Tea Beverage
Sunny-D Beverage
Tropicana Twister Cherry Berry Blast Beverage
Welch’s Grape Jelly Jelly
Wish-Bone Thousand Island Dressing Dressing
Wish-Bone Western Sweet & Smooth Dressing Dressing
Wyler’s Italian Ices Dessert
Yoo-hoo Chocolate Drink Beverage
Yoplait Strawberry Yogurt Dairy
Zoo Juice Orange

I recommend we start writing to our favorite manufacturers and threaten to not buy their products anymore. If we won’t let our kids play with toys made with lead – how can we reconcile mercury in their food?

Here is the article by Paula Crossfield, managing editor of Civil Eats.

January 29th, 2009  By Paula Crossfield

“Until now, parents of children with autism who have spoken up about their fears that their child’s disorder came on the heels of vaccination have been given the status of heretic. But it turns out that the increase in autism we have been witnessing over the last few decades could also be a result of the over-all increase in the body burden caused by mercury in our air and water, and by proxy the fish we eat, our vaccines and dental fillings, and now, in our high fructose corn syrup, a substance marketed and consumed most often by those most at risk: children.

It is a matter of record that our fish populations are accumulating mercury; and as the top of their food chain, we too are accumulating the toxin.  The neurological effects of mercury have been widely documented.  On the EPA’s website, for example, it lists the primary health effect of methylmercury on fetuses, infants, and children, as being impaired neurological development.

In 2004, a study [PDF] led by Raymond F. Palmer of the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio compared the rate of special education programs in Texas and the amount of mercury found in the environment and the results were alarming: “On average, for each 1000 lb of environmental mercury released, there was a 43% increase in the rate of special education services and a 61% increase in the rate of autism.”

He co-authored a second study [PDF] from February 2008 that took into account the proximity to sources of mercury output — like coal-fired utility plants, which account for 33% of the 158 tons of mercury spewed into the atmosphere annually, municipal/medical incinerators, which account for 29%, commercial/industrial boilers, which account for 18%.  Lower on the list but still noteworthy are hazardous waste sites, cement factories, and the chlorine production plants — which is where the caustic soda tainted with mercury in HFCS is being produced.  This second study found that “for every 10 miles from industrial or power plant sources, there was an associated decreased autism Incident Risk of 2.0% and 1.4%, respectively.”  In other words, the more mercury in the environment of a child or woman of childbearing age, the more likely for the child to develop autism.

The reason that the news on Monday that HFCS contains mercury is so alarming is two fold: First, the FDA had evidence of this in 2005 and did absolutely nothing — no testing, no warning the companies using the tainted HFCS to produces their ketchup, chocolate syrup, cereal bars and soda.  Therefore, more time has passed when mercury could bio-accumulate in our bodies, especially in populations at already at risk for heart disease, diabetes and obesity.  Second, there has been a previous association made between diet and autistic functionality — and specifically HFCS has been singled out as a cause for worsening the disorder. This means that there has been a growing body of evidence relating mercury to autism for some time, in which HFCS is only a new development.

This is dark news, because it means that our FDA is no longer working for us, and that in this time when we might have a receptive ear in Washington, it is more important than ever to challenge the preconceived notions of how government works. This could amount to one of the worst offenses by our government, which has been sitting on the evidence of mercury’s relationship to our health for too long in the name of corporate welfare.

The parents of autistic children should be given more of a voice in this discussion. In an article published on Salon.com in 2005, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. laid out the details on the correlation between autism and childhood vaccines.  It became clear to him that the parents of autistic children who blamed the vaccines for their child’s disorder were onto something when he stumbled onto a report from a conference in 2000 called Simpsonwood, where high-level officials from the FDA and Center for Disease Control (CDC), the top vaccine specialist from the World Health Organization in Geneva, and representatives of every major vaccine manufacturer, including GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Wyeth and Aventis Pasteur gathered to discuss a new study that linked a mercury-based preservative in vaccines to increasing rates of autism.  This group, instead of changing course, and giving value to the science before them, proceeded to cover up the data to save the vaccine companies’ bottom line.

Now, we are faced with some hard truth about the consequences of our environmental choices beginning at the Industrial Revolution.  While thimerosal, the mercury-laden preservative used in some vaccinations, is being phased out, we should still be asking for a better assessment of our body burden of mercury.  With all that we know now, about what toxic pollution in the air and water do to our food and by proxy our bodies, will we face facts and begin the process of real, lasting change that the Obama adminstration has so far seemed a beacon for?  The first step will be taking a hard look at environmental mercury, one of the most prevalent pollutants in our environment.  We have a mess on our hands, and we need to begin to repair the damage done before we can move forward healthfully.”

Paula Crossfield is the managing editor of Civil Eats. She is also a contributing producer at The Leonard Lopate Show on New York Public Radio where she focuses on food issues. She is currently developing a plan for an urban vegetable garden on her rooftop in Manhattan.

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Technorati Tags: autism, food, high fructose corn syrup, mercury

I have an Alex too – and he also suffers from Aspergers. Over the years, I have let him go to school (although not anymore)…and each time I did, he suffered very similar treatment – often at the hands of adults.

Aspergers kids are often very social, at least in their own heads, and this is largely true of my Al. He believes everyone likes him because he likes everyone and unfortunately, that is rarely the case.

You see, before I knew Alex had Aspergers, I used to tell people (mostly teachers) that he “lacked the switch” that could turn on or off social appropriateness. He has never understood the difference between an indoor or outdoor voice. We have even told him on occasion to “please stop talking” and he still can’t. He has to finish the thought – and the thoughts are often very long.

He doesn’t “get it” when people are showing him that they don’t want to talk or “hang out” anymore and he has an almost singular-like focus on certain topics – for example, when he’s reading, you can’t get him to do anything else and whatever he’s reading starts to overtake all aspects of his life. The Lord of the Rings phase took forever:-)

He doesn’t know that it’s not OK to blurt things out in the middle of a play. Some people have told me that this is because I never taught him, but all of my other children remain quiet…with Aspergers it’s not always about not being taught, it’s often about being unable to see the point – or unable to assimilate the information.

On the other hand, while some Aspergers kids lack empathy, my Alex does not. He feels very deeply and wouldn’t harm a fly. In fact, he is becoming a good babysitter – as long as he knows that the focus is solely on his little brother and nothing else. He is starting to have a few friends who seem to appreciate his sense of humor, but he does lack the ability to see when someone else isn’t interested in what he’s “into” and just kind of steamrolls a person with it.

He also likes to, as my husband puts it, “doink” with things. There is always something in his hand that he is fidgeting with – a rubberband, a pen, a piece of rope, a stick, a coin – anything. And he almost doesn’t notice it’s there. When he doesn’t have anything to “doink” with, he twists his fingers and pulls at them.

He has often, at the hands of teachers and peers, suffered all types of “abuse.” They have removed him from classes, sent him away, denied him all sorts of things from field trips to recess. In fact, one teacher we had posed a similar vote to the one Alex Barton suffered (although it wasn’t quite as excruciating). When my Alex was 10, his 5th grade teacher had the kids in his class vote as to whether or not he could attend the end of the year trip – a trip he had been looking forward to for quite some time. Of course, the kids voted no. Somehow, my Alex “earned” the trip back – but what an awful thing to do – and because this particular teacher is so revered in my school, no one cared and nothing was done.

This wasn’t, of course, the first time such a thing had happened to Alex but it was the main reason I chose to homeschool him permanently. I’m tired of fighting for my children with public school “educators” and refuse to do it anymore. I will not subject my children to their supposedly learned methods, when I find most “teachers” to be nothing more than adult versions of the adolescents at school – looking for a way to be “cool” and “accepted.”

But I digress.

Autistic and Aspergers kids have enough on their plates without the people that are supposed to be their advocates taking sides against them.

My Alex is flourishing in a homeschool environment, has more friends than he ever did at school and is advancing well past his 6th grade “level.” He’s a kind, compassionate young man with a lot (a lot) on his mind. I hope Alex Barton finds the peace and friendship he deserves as well -whether at home or at school. His mother seems to be a smart, loving mother who is right on top of it!

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These two posts, however, give some of the most compelling arguments I have read for the connection between vaccines and autism. While I have vaccinated my older children (waiting until they were older than 4), I may avoid vaccination altogether for the youngest two.

Anyway, read on…

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kim-stagliano/its-like-this-autism-_b_56599.html

Bless Us Children for You’ve Been Wronged

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Technorati Tags: autism