Assault by Cereal

What’s for breakfast?  When my kids were young, there were always a half dozen or so assorted boxes of breakfast cereal lined up on top of the refrigerator (the only place they would fit).  Back then, cereal was actually affordable at about $1.50 for a great big box.  The kids loved it and it was easy to fix.  Pour on the milk – and what a good mom I am for feeding my children a healthy breakfast.  Yes, I admit it.  That’s what I thought I was doing.  After all, I chose the “good” cereal – usually without the sugar coating… mostly things like Cheerios, and Shredded Wheat, and Rice Krispies, and – okay – maybe one box of Cocoa Puffs or Trix (my favorites).  But, no worries!  The cereal is “vitamin fortified!”  And everyone knows a little sugar won’t hurt you. 

When my third child came along, I was traumatically introduced to the dark side of food allergies—particularly food additive allergies, an event that marked the beginning of my label-reading obsession.  But that’s a long story I won’t go into right now.  Suffice it to say, I began to take a serious look at what is in our food.  Did it stop me altogether buying processed food?  Not for a good long while… and, I’m sorry to say, not soon enough.  Perhaps the overall healthiness of my children would be considerably better today had I paid better attention to what I was feeding them then.  But, we won’t wallow in regrets. 

Today’s topic is cereal, motivated by my youngest child (now an adult) who has been known to eat cereal for breakfast AND for supper on many if not most days.  And not your standard three-quarter or one cup serving, either.  We’re talking a serious main course serving of two to three cups of cereal along with its obligatory ratio of milk in a bowl normally used to mix up potato salad (okay, maybe not quite…but you get the point).

So the question is, what exactly is she getting in that cereal meal?  

First, I give you my favorite childhood cereal, Trix...

In all fairness, this is obviously not the cereal anyone would pick out for it's "healthy" qualities, so here's Cheerios, a more modest offering...

Ready-to-eat cereal, according to an article by Mike Hughlett that came out in today’s Minneapolis Star Tribune, is a $6 billion-plus business in the U.S.  Cheerios, for example, is a product that crosses every demographic, from toddlers (often their first solid “snack” food) to people my age looking for a fiber solution—including the occasional 30-year old looking for a convenient meal. 

Most cereal companies market their products these days with some kind of “health food” angle (notice the "whole grain" in the Trix), whether it’s low fat or high fiber, low sugar or more whole grain, gluten free or heart healthy.  But are they really any of those things?  Without the synthetic vitamin supplements pumped into the mix, what you’re getting is nothing more than a paste made from highly processed grain, sugar, and water (and very often artificial flavors and colors) that has been extruded under high heat and formed into some pleasing shape (usually resembling dry dog food), toasted and packaged into a nice box decorated with clever marketing slogans. 

Extruded?  What the heck is that?  From an eye-opening article on the Weston Price website, Dirty Secrets of the Food Processing Industry, Sally Fallon has this to say:  “In his book Fighting the Food Giants, biochemist Paul Stitt describes the extrusion process, which treats the grains with very high heat and pressure, and notes that the processing destroys much of their nutrients. It denatures the fatty acids; it even destroys the synthetic vitamins that are added at the end of the process. The amino acid lysine, a crucial nutrient, is especially damaged by the extrusion process.”  …So much for the added vitamins.  “When we put cereals through an extruder, it alters the structure of the proteins.” (emphases added)

Some studies have concluded that this extrusion process actually turns the proteins into toxins.  As a matter of fact, in a 1960 study by the University of Michigan (referenced in the above article), rats fed corn flakes died before the rats that ate the corn flake box—from malnutrition.  

“Furthermore, before death, the cornflakes-eating rats developed aberrant behavior, threw fits, bit each other and finally went into convulsions. Autopsy revealed dysfunction of the pancreas, liver and kidneys and degeneration of the nerves of the spine, all signs of insulin shock. The startling conclusion of this study was that there was more nourishment in the box than in the cornflakes. This experiment was designed as a joke, but the results were far from funny.”

So, BRAVO to the marketing masters who have convinced us all that ready-to-eat breakfast cereals will make us strong and stave off disease.  And what a choice we have.  More likely, at $5 a box, eating this stuff will keep the cereal manufacturers rolling in our dough… not to mention the pharmaceutical companies and our family physicians. 

Here's an idea... why not abandon the cereal aisle altogether, and cook up a couple farm fresh eggs for breakfast.  Throw in an orange for good measure and a link or two of pastured pork sausage; and instead of some dubious frankenfood, you'll be getting REAL food loaded with natural vitamins, minerals, enzymes, healthy fat and protein.  (I’m feeling healthier just thinking about it!)