The truth about the so-called 'Super Food' of the Century
Breakfast
cereals have never been more popular than they are today. Packed with
vitamins and minerals, they promise power, health and vitality,
especially to the young generation. There is hardly a commercial
breakfast cereal in the world that does not seem to contain everything a
child needs to receive the 'perfectly balanced' dietary nutrition.
However, despite this 'valuable' contribution to family health, a
frightening number of children show signs of ill health and lacking
immunity. The vitamins that are added to the cereals supposedly protect
the child against the vitamin-destroying sugar, but it seems that this
guarantee is no longer guaranteed.
Besides cornflakes, which still
top the list of American and European breakfast cereals, the sales of
new 'tasty and healthy' breakfast foods soar as never before. The main
marketing targets for these 'healthy' breakfast foods are children.
Research suggests that as many as 79 percent of all households use
ready-made breakfast cereals to start the day. Children are usually very
keen to try the latest cereal model, which contains essentially the
same ingredients as all the other types but comes in a different shape
and color. The well designed packaging depicting a healthy-looking
family or natural scenery promises the parents that the contents are of
pure and natural origin, often organically grown, and good for the
entire family. The kids love the happy friendly figures on the
cardboard. "If Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Bugs Bunny, or the strong
Dinosaurs like the cereal, then it must be good for me, too," some
children might argue.
Packaging has a powerful manipulative
influence on children. Researchers at Packard Children's Hospital in
California asked 63 children, ages three and five, to taste-test
servings of hamburger, French fries, chicken nuggets, baby carrots and
milk. Some of the servings were wrapped in containers with a McDonald's
logo, and some were wrapped in containers with no logo. As expected,
most of the kids thought the food in the McDonald's containers tasted
better than the identical food with no logo.
It doesn't take much
to convince an unsuspecting mother that the beautifully packaged foods
are actually good for her children. The mother, who naturally wants to
secure the best possible nutrition for her child, finds her mind put at
ease when she learns about the high nutritional value of the product in
the food table. It convincingly states that the cereal has the balanced
amounts of carbohydrates, protein and fats, and is most importantly
enriched with all the essential dietary supplements. If the right amount
of milk (mostly pasteurized and homogenized, which is the wrong choice)
is added to the super food, the child would have the best possible
start of the day that nature could provide, or so she may believe.
Shocking Revelations
Yet
the reality of the matter is quite the opposite. An American team of
researchers decided to prove to the world once and for all that
factory-made breakfast cereals are truly man's super-food. So they fed
the common breakfast cereals enriched with the most important vitamins
and minerals to young, healthy laboratory rats. The researchers divided a
total of 240 rats into two groups; one group received cereal and water
and the other one normal food and water. The experiment lasted for 45
days. The result was totally unexpected and devastating. The rats that
were fed with cereals, which according to common nutritional sense and
advertising should have turned them into strong and vital grown-up rats,
were close to death. They suffered from fatty livers, anemia and high
blood pressure. In a separate experiment, rats were fed with cornflakes,
which consisted of useless cornstarch and white sugar. In this group some of the animals died.
The
researchers had expected that the animals would grow faster with
cereals, yet they did not grow at all, and some of them even lost
weight. Especially the rats which received cereals with high sugar
content (sugar is thought to be fattening), had the least growth rates.
This is a summary of the results:
- The products that contained the least amounts of fat significantly increased the cholesterol levels of the rats. Some products were able to lower the rats' cholesterol levels but also caused fatty livers.
- Those rats that were fed with cereals containing only small amounts of salt increased their blood pressure whereas the ones that received cereals with higher salt contents lowered their blood pressure.
- Some of the products were enriched with iron, which should have raised hemoglobin concentrations in the blood of anemic animals. However, the results took the researchers by surprise:
a) There was no connection between higher intake of iron and hemoglobin levels. The rats stayed anemic despite ingesting large amounts of iron.
b) Those rats that had little iron in their blood deposited excessively large amounts of iron in their liver, which led to worsening of anemia (for a similar reason it is very questionable to give extra iron to people who suffer from anemia).
Poison that Tastes and Looks like Food
The
main conclusion we can draw from this experiment is that the purely
theoretical approach to diet and nutrition (using food tables and daily
nutritional recommendations) has not only been insufficient to raise the
standard of health in the population but has in fact caused more harm
and confusion than is currently assessable.
Sanctified by theories
of nutrition, which in actuality contradict the body's natural
responses to food, the food industry has been given the green light to
produce anything that fulfills the official nutritional requirements,
even if the 'foods' have a poisoning effect and create havoc in the
body.
There is no legislation to test man-made foods on animals
before giving them to millions of human beings. The average consumer
takes it for granted that the food produced by a reputable company must
be safe for human consumption, even if it contains plastic (using
animals to find out whether these foods are poisonous or not is cruel
and I don't advocate animal testing. I have reasons to believe that all
man-made foods have harmful effects on the human body, and I therefore
recommend that you avoid eating them).
Not all governments support
this disconcerting trend. According to an August 2004 issue of the
Guardian, some few health-conscious governments in Europe that are less
dominated by the food industry and big pharmaceutical companies, are
beginning to protect their people from obvious harmful practices.
Health
officials in Denmark recently banned the addition of vitamins and
minerals to 18 varieties of breakfast foods and cereals produced by
Kellogg Co. The reasons given include increasing evidence that eating
those products regularly can ruin the health of children and pregnant
women. Cereal is one of the first solid foods introduced to babies, and
pediatricians typically encourage parents to start feeding cereal to
their babies from between 4 and 6 months. Their advice grossly
contradicts findings from a study that cereals introduced in the diets
of babies increased the risk of insulin-dependent diabetes in the
children.
Kellogg had hoped to add iron, calcium, folic acid and
vitamin B6 to some cereals and cereal bars, as it is so common in other
countries. However, Danish health officials believe that these toxic
additives in the cereals can seriously harm the livers and kidneys of
children as well as unborn fetuses in pregnant women. A government
laboratory delivered the ban after examining the ingredient lists
provided by Kellogg.
