What's really in the breakfast cereals

You decide: and diet is. Do everything right and follow the advice of a friend who eats cereal at breakfast. Say goodbye to the croissant and go to the "shores" of the supermarkets, look among the boxes of breakfast cereal for the lightest one with the leanest woman who jumps cheerful and maybe a gadget or a DIY diet program reported on the back of the package (you will contemplate it several times in some mornings that start a little slow).

The miracle. After a breakfast like this, you arrive at lunch with little hunger. Brilliant, isn't it? Yet the weight does not go down . Not only. There is a backward drowsiness that you cannot explain. We will try together.

Pitfalls behind breakfast cereals

Let's start with a question that is common to virtually all cereal brands: the high quantity of sugars. Those Italians reach 40%, compared to the average of 37% of products destined for the rest of the European market.

The Inran (National Research Institute for Food and Nutrition) says it clearly: the appropriate percentage of sugar for breakfast should not exceed 10% . Oh-oh, Houston, we have a problem.

"But on the package it says that the amount of sugar is reduced to come to the aid of my costume test!" Oh, sure. But sugar is a chameleonic word, it takes other forms, everything recognizes them: molasses, treacle syrup, malt syrup, barley malt, sucrose, corn syrup, honey, lactose, cane sugar, etc.

It is very important to keep the glycemic index low, especially in the morning. If you have children, keeping them away from sugars is the best way to make sure they keep their attention high even at school. But even if you are an adult, a man or a woman.

Women, go take a look at the research carried out by the Italian Cancer Institute of Milan which I discovered thanks to an article by Silvia Carri appeared on Terra Nuova. (In detail: the study conducted by Krogh V, Berrino F., Chiodini P., Panico S. and others, entitled "Dietary glycemic load and index and risk of coronary heart disease in a large Italian cohort: the Epicor study", Arch Inter. Med. 2010, 170 (7), pp.640-647). The study shows that, in addition to predicting weight gain, foods with a high glycemic index increase the risk of coronary heart disease in women.

"But they work, I'm not hungry afterwards." And certainly. You are intoxicated. Intoxication gives appetite. And the same effect is created by fat overload.

In this regard, let's analyze the presence of fat.

In general, dear readers, this is "dead food", as packaged, as an industrial product. But you can always go towards the best hypothesis, if you don't have time to soak and heat oats or other cereals according to your taste.

Choose simple, lightly processed, organic cereals . The levels of sugars that are less than 10 g are low , the percentages of saturated fats (less than 1 g), sodium (less than 0.2 g) and that there are no hydrogenated fats, dyes, preservatives and sweeteners. Opt for cereals with an important fiber dose (at least 6 g) and, if possible, look for short-chain Italian products.

Find out how to use puffed rice

The extruded abstruses

The first extruded snacks appeared around the 1930s. And from there there was a growing fame due to the frenzied hunger of unconscious intoxicated. What is it about? Of products that have undergone specific processing steps that form the long extrusion-cooking process. Mentally visualize the flour, ready? Well.

Mixed, preconditioned through homogenization, prehumidification and precooking processes. Mixed with cooked water at 80-100 ° C. Here we are at a very beautiful, viscous mixture. Again, let's go back to cooking it mentally at 200 ° C inside an extruder. Don't lose concentration, we're almost there. Everything is molded into a die (all round, spherical, star-shaped, as you like) and then cut, while the passage from a high temperature to the environment causes the product to expand and solidify. Followed by cooling and drying.

Is there any trace of fiber and nutrients? Mmm ... the conclusion to you. But sometimes someone unmasks this the deceptive cereal? Oh, it happens all right, especially in America, where the food terror of the leisure class towards what is not biological coexists with the perennial intoxication of the obese subjects of the lower middle class.

Any examples? The US Federal Trade Commission has censored some products like Rice Krispies and Frosted for misleading advertising. The same sanction has been opted by the Antitrust Authority . All these brands promised miracles without scientific foundation.