Gettin' Off The Crack.

I'm willing to bet there's an assortment of cereals lurking in the cupboards of your kitchen. Truth be told, they seem to be a staple of the American diet.

Most people haven't given much thought to the "behind the scenes" processing that occurs before each box makes its joyful journey to the shelves of your local grocery store. All we see is the bright, colorful display of boxes, whole grain promises and heart-healthy options, which couldn't be further from the truth.

The following is another article from www.westonaprice.org which explains the processing that goes on before those little "O's" make it to your bowl (filled with conventional milk, which is a whole other issue).

Read and Heed:
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. Depending on the shape of the hole, the grains are made into little o's, flakes, animal shapes, or shreds (as in Shredded Wheat or Triscuits), or they are puffed (as in puffed rice). A blade slices off each little flake or shape, which is then carried past a nozzle and sprayed with a coating of oil and sugar to seal off the cereal from the ravages of milk and to give it crunch.

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.

The only advances made in the extrusion process are those that will cut cost regardless of how these will alter the nutrient content of the product. Cereals are a multi-billion dollar business, one that has created huge fortunes.

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.

For more in depth information on this and other popular American eats, go to this link:

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

Now, go scramble some eggs & veggies and then eat some peanut or almond butter.