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THE HISTORY OF GRAINS PART 3 As poor as refined flour and bread products have been throughout history, they were still able to support life, if not enhance it. In 1826 an experiment was conducted with the newly developed white bread of industrial England. The researchers discovered that a dog fed on fine white flour does not live past the 50 th day. A dog fed on the coarse whole bread lives and keeps his health. In the 19 th century the mass production of bread began in earnest. In fact the first assembly line in the world was devoted to making bread sea biscuits for English crews and required good storage qualities. This extended storage time for bread is the most often cited reason for the amount of refining done to the flour. Remove the nutrients, refine the flour even more, and the rats and insects will leave it alone. They know what many humans still don't know, that such refined flour products cannot support life and are worse than worthless to eat. Bread was the first "technological" food, it was industrial food for the masses, cheap in cost and devoid of nutrients. THE FIRST JUNK FOOD WAS BORN. Bad as the bread was in the 1800s and through the mid-1900s, it became much worse after the end of World War 2. The chemical warfare banned in the war in Europe was just transplanted to the bakeries of America. In order to make the flour "whiter than white" the millers started blowing chlorine gas ( a deadly poison if inhaled ) into the flour after it was milled. Other chemical oxidizers are added to bleach and mature the flour, such as nitrogen dioxide, bencoyl peroxide, potassium bromate, potassium iodate, and azocarbonamide. Are they dangerous? Well, Germany banned all such oxidizers back in 1958! What has happened since World War 2 is that man, for 5000 years previously, mechanically altered the wheat molecules by pounding and grinding. Now he has been chemically manipulating and reorganizing the wheat molecules. These chemical alterations in our food must have serious long term effects on those that eat such foods. FOOD FOR THOUGHT ???? (Extracts written by Mike Benton )