Last month we began to look at the evolution of breakfast cereal.
Ultimately, it was agreed that to stop the products tasting like horsefood, sugar was required
Its conception and development were on a par with that of junk food and chewing gum. Both of which were sold to consumers, generally, to utilise excess product for commercial reasons.
Having seen how cereal was conceived, let’s continue to look at how it developed in the commercial market, and become the product we see on our supermarket shelves.
At one point, in the US, there were over 100 cereal factories operating to satisfy the new craze, many making fabulously exaggerated claims about the health benefits of their products.
This symbiotic relationship between sales, health claims and the promotion of packaged breakfast cereals has continued ever since.
It wasn’t a coincidence that this particular development sprang up in the American Midwest, where vast tracts of virgin land had been recently opened up by settlers and turned over to the agricultural production that powered US development.
The road to nutritional corruption began early in the development of breakfast cereal. In early production, the argument was over whether to make the cereals more palatable by adding sugar. Ultimately, it was agreed that to stop the products tasting like horsefood, sugar was required.
In fact, many of the health benefits claimed for breakfast cereals depended upon fortification, rather than micronutrients, from the raw ingredients, most of which were either destroyed by the process or stripped away before it. The earliest fortification was with vitamin D, the so-called sunshine vitamin, and acted as a marketing tool.
Today, a new wave of fortification is coming, and once again its principal purpose is marketing. Companies are also considering the addition of omega-3 fatty acids such as DHA.
There are technical difficulties with this. Since the DHA tends to come from fish, it makes foods taste fishy, and its flavour has to be masked with other additives.
Returning to the origins of cereal, after adding sugar, global expansion followed quickly. In Europe, initially, the UK saw its first cornflakes in 1924 when unemployed men and boy scouts were used to act as a sales force for the imported cereal which was shipped in from Canada. By 1936, UK sales topped £1 million.
Coming right up to date, the technology used to make industrial quantities of breakfast cereal today is essentially the same as that developed from the kitchen experiments of early days, although new ways have been found to add the sugar, salt and flavourings.
Cornflakes are generally made by breaking corn kernels into smaller grits which are then steam cooked in batches of up to a tonne under pressure of about 20lbs per square inch. Flavourings, sugar and vitamins may be added at this stage, to replace those lost in processing. It then takes four hours and vast amounts of energy to drive the steam out of the cooked grits before they can be rolled by giant rollers into flakes.
Steamed wheat biscuits such as shredded wheats (not the commercial name but the name of the actual product) are made with whole wheat grains which are pressure cooked with water. They are then passed between rollers which squeeze them into strands and build them up into layers.
These processes begin the breakdown of raw starches in the cereals, so even though they are wholegrains, they are absorbed more quickly in the body – and they typically have glycemic index (GI) scores of around 75. In comparison, the GI for cornflakes, and several other well-known cereals is in the high 70s or low 80s, in particular, those loved by children.
Compare those scores with a GI of 45/46 for minimally-processed grains such as porridge or muesli without sugar. Glucose has a GI of 100, which is the basis of the GI measure against other foods.
These GI scores indicate how fast different foods are converted to glucose and absorbed into the bloodstream. (We have looked in the past at the benefits of a low GI diet and there are many books available for further information.)
Felicity Lawrence, the writer of Eat Your Heart Out: Why the Food Business is Bad For the Planet and Your Health and Not on the Label, explores the history and development of cereals in much greater depth.
kathryn@maltanet.net