Corn syrup, in Aajonus's framework, is not a food. It is a processed, manufactured substance that has no legitimate place in the Primal Diet under any circumstances. It is categorically distinguished from raw corn, which Aajonus classified not as a vegetable but as a bland fruit, sweet, digestible, and acceptable for most people when eaten raw and whole. Corn syrup, by contrast, is the industrially processed derivative of corn that results from chemical and heat treatment of the corn grain, and in Aajonus's view, it shares more in common with plastic and industrial chemicals than with anything that should enter the human body as nutrition.

Corn syrup occupies a particularly significant place in Aajonus's critique of the modern industrial food system because of how ubiquitous it has become in manufactured foods. He identified it as present in approximately 70% of all manufactured foods as a sweetener, making it one of the most pervasive adulterants in the modern food supply. It is not simply an unhealthy sweetener, it is, in his framework, a primary driver of obesity, a vector for GMO contamination, and a substance that when combined with hydrogenated vegetable oils produces something structurally and functionally equivalent to plastic or styrofoam in the body.

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Aajonus directly and explicitly identified corn syrup as the main cause of obesity. He stated: "The main cause of obesity is processed carbohydrates, such as corn syrup that is in 70% of all manufactured foods as a sweetener." He distinguished this from the false narrative promoted by the mainstream medical and food industries that animal fats cause heart disease and obesity. In his view, animal fats do not cause those conditions, hydrogenated vegetable oils are the main factor in heart disease, and corn syrup is the primary driver of obesity. These are two distinct culprits that he kept separate and did not conflate.

One of Aajonus's most vivid and concrete descriptions of corn syrup's effects comes from his analysis of ice cream manufacturing. He explained that when manufacturers began combining hydrogenated vegetable oils with sugar and corn syrup, the resulting product was not food but plastic, specifically, a sugar plastic. He used the word "styrofoam" to describe the texture and structural reality of what this combination produces. He said: "They take the oil and the sugar and the sugar and corn syrup, and what do you have? You have plastic. You have a sugar plastic."

He traced this transformation historically to the mid-to-late 1960s, when commercial ice cream shifted away from dairy-based formulations toward hydrogenated vegetable oil and corn syrup-based formulations. He contrasted this directly with brands like Ben and Jerry's or Brockmeyer's, which he identified as still using dairy rather than corn syrup and hydrogenated vegetable oil, noting that only those dairy-based products escaped the "styrofoam" characterization. He noted, however, that even those brands pasteurized their dairy.

In a particularly revealing commentary on soft drinks, Aajonus noted that corn syrup had actually been the "nearest thing they got to anything food value" in products like Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola, and even that minimal acknowledgment was damning, because he immediately qualified it by saying that "in a soap process there's really no value in it." When manufacturers removed even corn syrup from soft drinks and replaced it with aspartame, he identified that transition as moving from a substance with near-zero food value to "one of the most toxic substances on this planet." This was not a defense of corn syrup, it was a condemnation of the entire soft drink industry, but it illustrates where corn syrup sits in the hierarchy: it is terrible, but aspartame is worse.

He noted that the King and Queen of England, through the Windsor family's ownership of major food processing companies worldwide, had originally believed no one would be "stupid enough to just drink chemicals", meaning they did not own Coca-Cola or Pepsi-Cola, which were "renegade" companies. Yet people did drink them. As even corn syrup was removed from these products and replaced with aspartame, the last trace of anything approaching a natural substance was eliminated.

Aajonus stated that 90% of the corn used in food processing is genetically modified (GMO). This means that virtually all corn syrup in the commercial food supply is derived from GMO corn. He identified GMO foods as having "proved to cause many allergies, cellular mutations and some diseases." This GMO contamination compounds the harm of corn syrup beyond the simple processing damage, adding a mutagenic and allergenic dimension to its effects.

He elaborated elsewhere on the GMO corn situation: when asked about corn availability, he confirmed that while most commercially sold corn is genetically modified, heirloom corn can still be obtained from seed places on the internet and from homestead sources. He personally bought heirloom corn in quantity and brought it to the Philippines and elsewhere. But all of this was in the context of whole raw corn, not corn syrup, which is extracted from commercially processed corn and would almost universally come from GMO sources.

While Aajonus did not always separate corn syrup from other processed sugars in his biochemical explanations, his descriptions of processed sugar's effects are directly applicable. He explained that when carbohydrate-derived glycogen is used as blood sugar, Columbia University found that 70 to 90% of the resulting advanced glycation end products (AGEs) store in the body. This is in sharp contrast to pyruvate, a protein sugar, where the body only manufactures 7 to 8% and it never stores. He described how processed sugars cause the blood and neurological system to become "very stiff," cause synapse misfiring, and cause the axons to send charges in wrong directions, leading to loss of train of thought and cognitive dysfunction.

He also discussed how high-carbohydrate processed foods including those laden with corn syrup are high in acrylamides, toxic sugar products that form when carbohydrate-rich foods are cooked or processed. He identified cereals, potato chips, and donuts as among the worst, all of which would commonly contain corn syrup. Swedish university research involving nine to twelve full professors and chemists found that almost every tumor examined had the most concentrated element of acrylamides. Corn syrup, as a processed carbohydrate product used in these high-acrylamide foods, is part of that toxic chain.

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Corn syrup is exclusively a processed substance. There is no "raw" version of corn syrup that Aajonus acknowledged or endorsed. The process of making corn syrup involves heat and chemical treatment that transforms the corn's natural sugars into a highly concentrated, processed monosaccharide or disaccharide form that penetrates the system in a way that raw corn does not.

This is illuminated by contrast with Aajonus's extensive discussion of raw sugarcane juice. He explained that to extract sugar from sugarcane, it must be boiled at 450 to 700 degrees (he cited various temperatures across different talks: 450–700°F, 475–760°F, and as high as "almost 800 degrees") to get the cellulose to break down and release the sugar molecule. Before that processing, the sweet taste in raw sugarcane juice is not actually sugar, it is the alkalinizing minerals: potassium, phosphorus, calcium, and similar minerals that taste sweet but are not carbohydrates in the same sense. He said there is "very little carbohydrates in sugar cane juice" precisely because the sugar is locked in the cellulose and can only be freed through high-heat processing.

The same principle applies to corn. The corn kernel contains starch and sugars, but the industrial processing that produces corn syrup, extracting, concentrating, and chemically modifying the corn's sugars, creates a fundamentally different substance than raw corn. The processing that turns corn into corn syrup involves exactly the kind of high-heat, chemical treatment that Aajonus identified as converting food into something damaging or toxic.

Aajonus placed the transition from dairy-based ice cream to corn syrup and hydrogenated vegetable oil ice cream in the mid-to-late 1960s, describing it as ice cream becoming "styrofoam." This historical framing positions corn syrup not as something that always existed in food but as a relatively recent industrial addition that fundamentally altered the nature of processed foods.

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One of the most practically actionable and detailed discussions of corn syrup in Aajonus's correspondence concerns its use as an adulterant in commercial honey. Beekeepers and honey companies, he explained, would bottle corn syrup in with honey to save money. This is a direct corruption of one of the few sweeteners Aajonus endorsed, unheated honey, and he addressed it with considerable specificity.

How to detect corn syrup adulteration in honey: Aajonus said that usually the taste will differ from pure honey. His personal testing method was to consume only ¼ teaspoon to test. He described the specific physical reaction: "It burns my tongue, especially the throat and lingers for about 10 minutes." This burning sensation lasting approximately 10 minutes from only ¼ teaspoon was his indicator of corn syrup contamination.

His sourcing policy: He was unequivocal: "If the bee keeper uses corn syrup or sugar at any time, I do not buy honey from him/her." This is an absolute rule, not a conditional one. Even a single documented instance of corn syrup use by a beekeeper was grounds for permanently removing that beekeeper from his sourcing.

A detailed real-world example of corn syrup honey adulteration was documented in Aajonus's correspondence regarding Honey Pacifica, a specific honey company whose sage honey he had been purchasing. Honey Pacifica confessed to feeding their bees corn syrup during the previous winter. A correspondent expressed concern that as consumers, they had never known the bees were being fed corn syrup and would not have known if the bottled honey had been corrupted.

Aajonus's response documented the following:

• Honey Pacifica promised never to feed bees corn syrup again and stated it was the first and only time.
• Their explanation: they did not expect the bees would run out of the honey they had left for them, which is why they gave the bees corn syrup as an emergency measure.
• Aajonus's instruction to them: they should always dip into their own bottled honey to supply the bees in case of emergency.
• Honey Pacifica agreed to this protocol for the future, including the then-current year.

His purchasing decision following this disclosure: He stated: "Yes, this Spring's crop. I didn't buy any last season because they used syrup. I had 4 gallons stored." He did not buy from them during the season when corn syrup was used but was willing to resume purchasing the following spring's crop after they made their commitment.

This case illustrates his policy precisely: corn syrup use by a beekeeper results in a purchasing boycott for that season's product, but the door is not permanently closed if the beekeeper makes a credible commitment to stop.

Why corn syrup in bee feed matters: When bees are fed corn syrup, Aajonus treated this as a contamination event for the honey they subsequently produce. The bees are processing the corn syrup through their systems, and what they produce cannot be considered pure honey. This is distinct from the question of whether the corn syrup was directly mixed into the bottled honey, even feeding bees corn syrup was grounds for not purchasing that honey.

When Aajonus discussed corn syrup in the context of processed foods, he noted that 90% of the corn used in food processing is genetically modified. This is a sourcing reality that means nearly all commercially available corn syrup is derived from GMO corn, adding GMO contamination to the processing damage inherent in corn syrup production.

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This section does not apply to corn syrup itself, as Aajonus did not endorse consuming corn syrup under any circumstances and therefore provided no pairing protocol for it. The concept of required fat buffering in his system applies to foods that are endorsed but need to be slowed for proper absorption, such as raw carrot juice, raw fruit, or raw honey. Corn syrup is not in this category.

However, the contrast is instructive: Aajonus's concern about high-carbohydrate substances causing sugar reactions and advanced glycation end products was precisely the concern that made corn syrup categorically unacceptable. Even foods he did endorse in small amounts, like raw honey, were recommended with fat present (such as pairing honey with cream, butter, or cheese) to slow the sugar's impact. Corn syrup received no such accommodation because it was not considered a food at all.

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Aajonus documented corn syrup's extraordinary reach into the modern food supply: present in 70% of all manufactured foods as a sweetener. Soft drinks are specifically called out as "loaded with corn syrup." This saturation was not accidental in his view but was part of the broader industrial food processing system that he identified as owned and controlled at the highest levels by entities like the Windsor family (King and Queen of England), who he stated own all major food processing companies in the world.

In his political analysis, Aajonus described Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola as "renegade" companies that the King and Queen of England did not invest in because they believed nobody would be "stupid enough to just drink chemicals." These companies used corn syrup as their sweetener, their "nearest thing to food value", before eventually switching to aspartame. Aajonus found it remarkable and damning that people proved willing to drink these chemical concoctions in the quantities they did.

Aajonus connected corn syrup's harm to the GMO system controlled by Monsanto. He stated that 90% of the corn used in food processing is GMO, and that "all of the examination, all of the material that Monsanto did on it proved it was a bad substance, and the FDA approved it anyway." He also noted that the FDA had looked at the information proving harm and "approved it anyway", and that the same FDA was simultaneously concerned about raw milk and had taken away raw juices from health food stores.

He further noted that GMO corn, soybean, and what he described as genetically engineered wheatgrass were all being sold not just in conventional markets but also prominently in health food stores, because those stores had been "sold that it's good" by "the biggest marketing industry."

Aajonus documented the historical shift in ice cream manufacturing as a case study in the introduction of corn syrup into the food supply. Starting in the mid-to-late 1960s, manufacturers transitioned from dairy-based ice cream to formulations using hydrogenated vegetable oils and corn syrup. He credited the initial shift to the argument that vegetable oil-based products were healthier than animal fat-based ones, a claim he rejected entirely. The result, in his description, was that most commercial ice cream became "styrofoam," with Ben and Jerry's and Brockmeyer's singled out as brands that held the line by using dairy rather than vegetable oils and corn syrup. He noted that even Breyer's, which he described as "more natural," still had "some chemicals in it" and was "not completely non-chemically produced."

The Honey Pacifica situation represents Aajonus's only documented case study of a specific named company using corn syrup in relation to honey production. It illustrates how even companies operating in the natural/raw food space may resort to corn syrup for economic reasons (in this case, an emergency measure when bees ran out of honey), and how consumers have essentially no way of knowing this has occurred without either direct disclosure or his taste-test method. His response, boycotting that season's product, educating the producer on proper emergency protocols, and conditionally resuming purchases after commitments were made, models the kind of engaged sourcing relationship he believed was necessary for obtaining genuinely clean food.

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