The chemicalization of the American Breakfast

Industrial food processing and health issues

Note: Muriella’s Corner has been following the issues raised regarding chemicals in our water supply, our cosmetics, our children’s toys…but these refer usually to heavy metals and other toxic chemicals. But we have not been consciously following the processing of foods and how they are denatured and rendered devoid of nutrients, and how we willingly choose and buy these products usually because of the way they are marketed to us and not because of a conscious choice.

The Editor, Muriella’s Corner

Many of us are becoming increasingly aware of the intimate relationship between the foods we eat and our health. But how many of us ever consider that the way our foods are processed can be devastating to our health and that of the next generation?

Food processing is natural and traditional. Farmers, artisans, homemakers all process foods, especially to enhance digestion and to secure and preserve foods. However, with the advent of the industrial processing industry, these two basic reasons have given place to increased profits and reduced nutritional content in the foods processed.

Sally Fallon founder of westonaprice.org, takes us through the chemicalization of our American Breakfast – the dirty secrets of the industry processing our cereal, milk, bacon, orange juice…Read full article in Muriella’s Corner online newsletter

Packaged Cereals

In his book Fighting the Food Giants – A Former Corporate Insider Reveals How America’s Huge Food Conglomerates are Ripping You Off! , Paul Stitt describes how the extrusion process used for these cereals destroys the fatty acids and even the chemical vitamins that are added at the end. The amino acids are rendered very toxic by this process and 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. All dry cereals that come in boxes are extruded cereals.

Old fashioned porridge

In Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats , it is explained that old fashioned porridges should be soaked overnight in an acid medium (in warm water with one tablespoon of something acidic like a tablespoon of yogurt, lemon juice or vinegar) to neutralize the tannins, complex proteins, enzyme inhibitors and phytic acid. The next morning, the porridge cooks in about a minute. Of course, you eat your porridge with butter or cream like our grandparents did. The nutrients in the fats are needed to absorb the nutrients in the grains. That was one of the great lessons of Weston Price, that without the vitamins present in animal fats (vitamins A and D), you cannot assimilate minerals and other vitamins. You can be taking mineral supplements, drinking green juices or eating organic food until it comes out your ears, but you cannot absorb the minerals in your food without vitamins A and D that are exclusively found in the animal fats.

Milk

The minute you start to process your milk, you destroy Mother Nature’s perfect food.

The industrial system of agriculture puts our dairy cows inside on cement all their lives and gives them foods that cows are not designed to eat—grain, soy, citrus peel cake and bakery waste. These modern cows produce huge amounts of watery milk which is very low in fat.

Milk from these industrial cows is then shipped to a milk factory. The largest milk poisoning in American history occurred in 1985 where more than 197,000 people across three states were sickened after a “pasteurization failure” at an Illinois bottling plant.

…Of the reconstituted milks, whole milk will most closely approximate original cow’s milk. The butterfat left over will go into butter, cream, cheese, toppings and ice cream. The dairy industry loves to sell low fat milk and skim milk because …READ MORE ON MILK, Milk Allergies, Powdered Milk.

Orange Juice

A quote from Processed and Prepared Foods states that “a new orange juice processing plant is completely automated and can process up to 1,800 tons of oranges per day to produce frozen concentrate, single strength juice, oil extracted from the peel, and cattle feed.”

In the processing, the whole orange is put into the machine. Enzymes are added to get as much oil as possible out of the skin. Oranges are a very heavily sprayed crop. These sprays are cholinesterase inhibitors, which are real neurotoxins. When they put the oranges in the vats and squeeze them, all those pesticides go into the juice.

What about the orange peel used for cattle feed? The dried left-over citrus peel is processed into cakes which are still loaded with cholinesterase inhibitors and organophosphates. Mark Purdey in England has shown these neurotoxins are correlated with “Mad Cow Disease” (Bovine Spongiform Encephalitis or BSE). The use of organophosphates either as a spray on the cows or in their feed is one of the causes of the degeneration of the brain and nervous system in the cow and if these components are doing this to the nervous system of the cow, there’s a possibility they are doing this to you also. In fact, a study carried out in Hawaii found that consumption of fruit and fruit juices was the number one dietary factor for the development of Alzheimer’s disease. The researchers speculated that the real culprit was the pesticides used in fruit—and concentrated in the juices due to modern processing techniques.

The FDA has decreed that we can no longer buy raw juice, because it might be a source of pathogens. But it might surprise you to know that they have found fungus that is resistant to pressure and heat in the processed juices. One study found that 17% of Nigerian packages of orange juice and 20% of mango and tomato juices contained heat resistant fungi. They also found E. coli in the orange juice that was pressure resistant and had survived pasteurization. So there is plenty of danger from contamination from pasteurized juices.

In one study, heat-treated and acid-hydrolyzed orange juice was tested for mutagenic activity. The authors hypothesized that the heating process produces intermediate products, which under test conditions, give rise to mutagenicity, and cytotoxicity. In other words you have got cancer-causing compounds in your orange juice. In another study, gel filtration and high performance liquid chromatography were used to obtain mutagenic fractions from heated orange juice.

Another study shows just how toxic and damaging these juices are to teeth. They found that rats had more tooth decay from these commercial juices than they did from soda pop, which is loaded with sugar.

One more thing about processed orange juice. Have you ever wondered why processed orange juice stays cloudy, why the solids do not settle? This is because soy protein combined with soluble pectin is added, and this keeps the juice permanently cloudy. It might be interesting to know, for those of you who are allergic to soy.

The full article and more contained in Muriella’s Corner newsletter

http://www.muriellascorner.com