Breakfast cereals purchased in health stores are no better than those purchased at the grocery stores. They may not contain sugar or artificial colourings, but these cereals are made by the same process and often in the same factories as the cereals sold at the supermarket.
Modern breakfast cereals are made by a process called extrusion. The grains are mixed with water to make a slurry and then forced out of a tiny hole at very high temperatures and pressures. The shape of the hole determines whether the final product will be a flake, a little ‘o’, a puffed grain or a shredded grain. Extrusion represents extreme bruising to our grains. Scientists have looked at the effects of extrusion on the proteins in grains and found extrusion disruptive and distort the precisely folded proteins in our grains, rendering them toxic, particularly to the nervous system. Millions of children begin their day with a bowl of extruded breakfast cereals. Do the toxic protein fragments in these cereals explain why so many children cannot concentrate at school? Two unpublished studies indicate that extruded grains become toxic, particularly to the nervous system.
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