What is HFCS?

HFCS stands for High Fructose Corn Syrup, is used as a replacement for sucrose (table sugar), largely used in many food and beverages such as cereals, bread, ketchup and many more. Compared to sucrose, HFCS has improved stability and function while having its sweetness comparable with that of sucrose.

Feeding HFCS to bees

Colony Collapse disorder is a major issue to honey farmers when bee colonies had been dying and were unable to produce enough honey. Many researches tried to determine the cause of the issue and suggested many factors to the problem, such as pesticide and air contamination, GMO genetic contamination, changes in climate and the Earth’s magnetic field.

However, in the year 2009, a ground-breaking discovery led researches to believe in the possibility of bees being poisoned after being fed with HFCS by honey farmers.Some commercial beekeepers fed their bees with HFCS to increase the production of honey and to increase the reproduction rate of bees. When there was low availability of sucrose to be fed to the bees, farmers used HFCS as a substitute to the problem.

When HFCS is exposed to heat, it will form a toxic substance called Hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) that may highly be the cause of Colony Collapse disorder.

Side effects to human body

Food science researches were worried that the effect may have an impact on human health as well and decided to focus on the studies of HFCS consumption on human health.

  • Studies had been conducted on the effect on HMF on human cells and with strong scientific evidence, it has been proven that the more exposure to HMF, the more DNA damage.
  • Besides that, the breakdown of HMF by enzymes produced in the human body may produce even more harmful substances than HMF.