Why Breakfast Cereals are actually junk food!

YES your breakfast cereal is in fact JUNK FOOD!

One of the reasons why we are battling an obesity epidemic at the moment is because we have been eating foods that Marketing companies have been telling us to eat! If a food doesn't need marketing its generally because its naturally good for you and hasn't been processed (e.g. bananas, broccoli, almonds - have you even seen an advert for them, probably not!).

What exactly is Cereal?

Actual definition of cereal is any grass that produces a seed that is used for food e.g. rice, oats, wheat, barley. However this isn't really what pops into your head when you think of cereal.

Next time the ad breaks come on the television count how many cereal adverts you see - you will be surprised how many there are! One of the really scary facts is that most of these adverts are targeted at kids, think colourful ads with cartoons etc.

 

For example - Frosties

Ingredients: Maize, Sugar, Barley Malt Flavouring, Salt. Calcium Carbonate, Niacin, Iron, Vitamin B6, Vitamin B2 (Riboflavin), Vitamin B1 (Thiamin), Folic Acid, Vitamin D, Vitamin B12

Notice that sugar is the second ingredient in this list? This means that it is in the second highest quantity of the ingredients above. The company have added other items like vitamins and iron to make you think that you are eating a healthy food (take a look at the label again - now it has a reason to say a source of "Folic Acid" and "Contains Vitamins"). Trust me there are far better ways of getting both in your diet!

Lets take a look at the "nutritional value" of the serving size (which by the way is 30g and most people would have DOUBLE this)

There is 11g of sugar in one 30g serving - this is over 3 teaspoons of sugar, not a great way to start the day as your blood sugar will peak causing an insulin rush and you then crave sugar again.

 

 

 

Starting your day on a sugary cereal  literally sets you up for failure.  

The process of Extrusion

If the sugar content alone wasn't enough to put you off for good - the manufacturing process will.

 

Breakfast cereals are produced by a process called extrusion. This is where the grains are mixed with water, processed into a slurry and placed in a machine called an extruder. The grains are forced out of a tiny hole at high temperature and pressure, which shapes them into little o’s, flakes or shreds. Individual grains passed through the extruder expand to produce puffed wheat, oats and rice. These products are then subjected to sprays that give a coating of oil and sugar to seal off the cereal (this gives it a crunch so when you have milk on it so it doesn't get soggy!).

Biochemist Paul Sitt in his book "Fighting the Food Giants" details the extrusion process - the grains are treated with very high heat and pressure and he notes that this process actually destroys the majority of their nutrients. This process denatures the fatty acids and 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.

If you are brave, read this article about experiments on rats, the research from this study suggests that the puffing of wheat (a process that most cereal manufacturers use) is actually a toxin. This is scary stuff.

Its time we take notice of what we are eating!

Some reading:

http://www.bodyandsoul.com.au/nutrition/nutrition+tips/is+cereal+worse+than+junk+foodr,7171
http://www.elitefitnessandperformance.com/-blog/healthy-cereal
http://www.westonaprice.org
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuWPnIW5qq4
http://www.kelloggs.co.uk/en_GB/frosties.html