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Refined Grain Good day to all of you out there! Last week we were giving an example why refined grains become nutritionally unbalanced. Here is another example.. Both, iron and copper minerals are destroyed in the refining process. Copper is necessary for the utilization of iron in the body to build a healthy blood stream. Inorganic iron (useless to the body anyway) is added back to the stripped flour, but of course the copper is not. You can't fool around with the natural balance of nutrients in foods, and then hope to restore them or negate the harmful effects created by the processing. Any refining of the grain quickly destroys the B- vitamins, vital for the health of the nerves and body. Interestingly enough, the body requires B-vitamins to metabolize or use these grain products (which is why they are present in the food in the first place) if these vitamins are removed from the grain products, then the body must rob the currant supply of b vitamins in the body so that these refined grains can be digested. Not only are refined grains and their products nutritionally deficient and imbalanced, they can also contribute to a loss of vitamins and minerals already present in the body. Food processing is used to describe everything from home cooking to sophisticated food-manufacturing processes. Actually, anything we do alter the original state of food, be it cooking, blending, refining, or adding a hundred chemical ingredients, is a form of food processing. When we talk about food processing and grains, however, we are mostly concerned with food refining. Refining is the breaking down of a whole food into various parts. Grains, for example, are often eaten in the form of flour products such as breads, pastries etc.. Few people eat grains in their whole forms as they are harvested. Whenever foods are eaten in fragmented, refined, or processed form, a lower level of health invariably results. Food is man's most immediate point of contact with nature. As such, it must be suited to the laws that govern our body. While the human body is a remarkably flexible instrument, it cannot adapt to foods that have been radically altered from their natural form. In our newsletters No 19, 20, and 21 we traced the early history of grains and who baked the first commercial loaf. Please refer to those newsletters, as it is very interesting indeed. For those of you who joined us after those newsletters were sent, please visit our website at http://crazynut.theshoppe.com all our letters to date can be retrieved there. In the late 1880's Dr John Harvey Kellogg ran a sanatorium for vegetarian Adventists. Searching for a healthy meal substitute for his patients, Dr Kellogg invented "Corn flakes" in 1895. One of Kellogg's patients, C.W.Post, was experimenting on himself to devise a "food cure". He came up with "grape nuts", and the breakfast cereal industry was born. Within 5 years Post's cereals were making over a million dollars a year, and Kellogg had taken over the town of Battle Creek, Michigan, with his cereal factories. Up in Niagara falls, Nabisco's Shredded Wheat had arrived on the scene, and the dietetic character of the nation was being slowly molded. These 3 cereal companies were almost solely responsible for making refined cereals a major part of the diet. The cereals were originally promoted supposed health benefits, and industrialized America was ready for its first convenience foods. Breakfast cereals had become the first commercial "health" food. How healthy? That we will see next week. See you next Thursday, The Crazy Nut Team