even health food cereal -- all extruded cereal is not a good thing

[Guest guest]

Following is a clip from Dirty Secrets of the Food Processing Industry

by Sally Fallon..

 

The article covers other issues besides cereal and can

be seen at the below web page. I am sending info on cereal as a

follow-up

to the statement I made about it in my just previous email. The

article is

supurb and worth going to the web page to read...........g

 

http://www.westonaprice.org/modernfood/dirty-secrets.html

 

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Dry breakfast cereals are produced by a process called extrusion.

Cereal makers first create a slurry of the grains and then put them in

a machine called an extruder. The grains are forced out of a little

hole at high temperature and pressure. In his book Fighting the Food

Giants, Paul Stitt has tells us that the extrusion process used for

these cereals destroys most of the nutrients in the grains. It destroys

the fatty acids; it even destroys the chemical vitamins that are added

at the end. The amino acids are rendered very toxic by this process.

The amino acid lysine, a crucial nutrient, is especially denatured by

extrusion. This is how all the boxed cereals are made, even the ones

sold in the health food stores. They are all made in the same way and

mostly in the same factories. All dry cereals that come in boxes are

extruded cereals.

With so many people eating breakfast cereals, you might expect to find

some studies on the effect of extruded cereals on animals or humans.

Yet, there are no published studies at all in the scientific

literature.

 

The Rat Experiments

Let me tell you about two studies which were not published. The first

was described by Paul Stitt who wrote about an experiment conducted by

a cereal company in which four sets of rats were given special diets.

One group received plain whole wheat, water and synthetic vitamins and

minerals. A second group received puffed wheat (an extruded cereal),

water and the same nutrient solution. A third set was given only water.

A fourth set was given nothing but water and chemical nutrients. The

rats that received the whole wheat lived over a year on this diet. The

rats that got nothing but water and vitamins lived about two months.

The animals on water alone lived about a month. But the company's own

laboratory study showed that the rats given the vitamins, water and all

the puffed wheat they wanted died within two weeks---they died before

the rats that got no food at all. It wasn't a matter of the rats dying

of malnutrition. Autopsy revealed dysfunction of the pancreas, liver

and kidneys and degeneration of the nerves of the spine, all signs of

insulin shock.

 

Another unpublished experiment was carried out in the 1960s.

Researchers at Ann Arbor University were given 18 laboratory rats. They

were divided into three groups: one group received corn flakes and

water; a second group was given the cardboard box that the corn flakes

came in and water; the control group received rat chow and water. The

rats in the control group remained in good health throughout the

experiment. The rats eating the box became lethargic and eventually

died of malnutrition. But the rats receiving the corn flakes and water

died before the rats that were eating the box! (The last corn flake rat

died the day the first box rat died.) But before death, the corn flake

rats developed schizophrenic behavior, threw fits, bit each other and

finally went into convulsions. The startling conclusion of this study

is that there was more nourishment in the box than there was in the

corn flakes.

 

 

Most of America eats this kind of cereal. In fact, the USDA is gloating

over the fact that children today get the vast majority of their

important nutrients from the nutrients added to these boxed cereals.

 

There are no published studies on the effects of these extruded grains

on animals or humans, but I did find one study in a literature search

that described the microscopic effects of extrusion on the proteins.

" Zeins, " which comprise the majority of proteins in corn, are located

in spherical organelles called protein bodies. During extrusion, these

protein bodies are completely disrupted and deformed. The extrusion

process breaks down the organelles, disperses the proteins and the

proteins become toxic. When they are disrupted in this way, you have

absolute chaos in your food, and it can result in a disruption of the

nervous system.