World Nutrition Volume 5, Number 3, March 2014 World Nutrition Volume 5, Number 3, March 2014 Journal of the World Public Health Nutrition Association Published monthly at www.wphna.org Processing. Breakfast food Amazing tales of ready-to-eat breakfast cereals Melanie Warner Boulder, Colorado, US Emails:
[email protected] Introduction There are products we all know or should know are bad for us, such as chips (crisps), sodas (soft drinks), hot dogs, cookies (biscuits), and a lot of fast food. Nobody has ever put these items on a healthy list, except perhaps industry people. Loaded up with sugar, salt and white flour, they offer about as much nutritional value as the packages they’re sold in. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg, the obvious stuff. The reach of the processed food industry goes a lot deeper than we think, extending to products designed to look as if they’re not really processed at all. Take, for instance, chains that sell what many people hope and believe are ‘fresh’ sandwiches. But since when does fresh food have a brew of preservatives like sodium benzoate and calcium disodium EDTA, meat fillers like soy protein, and manufactured flavourings like yeast extract and hydrolysed vegetable protein? Counting up the large number of ingredients in just one sandwich can make you cross-eyed. I first became aware of the enormity of the complex field known as food science back in 2006 when I attended an industry trade show. That year IFT, which is for the Institute of Food Technologists, and is one of the food industry’s biggest gatherings, was held in New Warner M.