Do you eat food? Are you sure? Did you eat “breakfast cereal” this morning? Most “breakfast cereals” aren’t food, which puts them in the “entertainment” category. There are lots of ways to tell, but if the ingredient list alone doesn’t convince, you can just take a look at the highly-designed box. A big part of the experience of eating a bowl of cereal is having your face glued so closely to the captivating box that you have barely any awareness of the stuff you’re shoveling into your mouth. This, as I’ve said on many occasions, is not a good sign.

Try this experiment: empty your breakfast cereals into a plastic container and toss out the boxes. Notice how much less interesting the product-eating experience becomes. Without something to distract you, your attention falls to what’s in the bowl. And there just isn’t a whole lot there. Real food nourishes; the rest is entertainment.

Let’s take a look at the ingredients in Cheerios, made by General Mills. They list whole-grain oats first. Whole grains consist of a highly nourishing bran and germ, plus an endosperm, or starch core. The second ingredient is modified corn starch. Frankly I didn’t consider that corn starch to be food even before it was modified. Then, although whole grains already contain significant amounts of iron and B vitamins, all these are listed individually as separate ingredients. Cereal manufacturers add vitamins and minerals to cereals to compensate for losses that occur during processing, which may also help to explain the discrepancy between O’s and actual oat flour.

A comparison of Cheerios with Bob’s Red Mill Whole Grain Oat Flour reveals that O’s have less fiber and protein, which leads me to conclude either that 1) General Mills uses a lower-quality oat than does Bob, or 2) it dilutes the quality of the original product with fillers, thickeners and stabilizers. Which is what modified corn starch is. And don’t forget that Cheerios markets itself as a finger food for babies. Ugh.

The best way to nourish oneself is to eat foods as they actually grow. Whole foods include cofactors, enzyme activators, and vitamin formulations that maximize the availability of nutrients contained in the plants from which the food originated. What O’s are doing is what most processed baked goods do: start with a whole grain — oats, in this case — remove much of the nutrient-rich parts, and then attempt to replace some of them. In America this is called “enrichment” and, in the special case of folate, “fortification.” 

I think I’ll stick with whole grains.