Why Bleached Flour May Be Worse Than Chlorinated Water
http://blogs.mercola.com/sites/vitalvotes/archive/2009/03/11/Why-Bleached-Flour-May-Be-Worse-Than-Chlorinated-Water.aspx
by Dr. Mercola
Nearly everyone knows that white flour is not healthy for you, but
most people don't know that when white flour is bleached, it can
actually be FAR worse for you.
It's generally understood that refining food destroys nutrients. With
the most nutritious part of the grain removed, white flour
essentially becomes a form of sugar. Consider what gets lost in the
refining process:
* Half of the beneficial unsaturated fatty acids
* Virtually all of the vitamin E
* Fifty percent of the calcium
* Seventy percent of the phosphorus
* Eighty percent of the iron
* Ninety eight percent of the magnesium
* Fifty to 80 percent of the B vitamins
And many more nutrients are destroyed -- simply too many to list.
The Journey of the Wheat Berry
Have you ever wondered how white flour is made?
The website
<http://www.healthy-eating-politics.com/white-flour.html>Healthy
Eating Politics has an interesting article about the process.
Most commercial wheat production is, unfortunately, a "study in
pesticide application," beginning with the seeds being treated with
fungicide. Once they become wheat, they are sprayed with hormones and
pesticides. Even the bins in which the harvested wheat is stored have
been coated with insecticides. If bugs appear on the wheat in
storage, they fumigate the grain.
A whole grain of wheat, sometimes called a wheat berry, is composed
of <http://www.conejobread.com/wheat_kernel.htm>three layers:
* The bran
* The germ
* The endosperm
The bran is the layer where you'll find most of the fiber, and it's
the hard outer shell of the kernel. The germ is the nutrient-rich
embryo that will sprout into a new wheat plant. The endosperm is the
largest part of the grain (83 percent), making up most of the kernel,
and it's mostly starch.
White flour is made from the endosperm only, whereas whole-wheat
flour combines all three parts of the wheat berry.
Old time mills ground flour slowly, but today's mills are designed
for mass-production, using high-temperature, high-speed steel
rollers. The resulting white flour is nearly all starch, and even
much of today's commercially processed whole wheat flour has lost a
fair amount of nutritional value due to these aggressive processing methods.
White flour contains a small fraction of the nutrients of the
original grain, with the heat of the steel rollers having destroyed
what little nutrients remain. But then it is hit with another
chemical insult--a chlorine gas bath (chlorine oxide). This serves as
a whitener, as well as an "aging" agent.
Flour used to be aged with time, improving the gluten and thus
improving the baking quality. Now, it is treated with chlorine to
instantly produce similar qualities in the flour (with a disturbing
lack of concern about adding another dose of chemicals to your food).
According to <http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2006/08/347999.html>Jim
Bair, Vice President of the North American Millers Association:
"Today, the US milling industry produces about 140 million pounds of
flour each day, so there is no way to store the flour to allow it to
age naturally. Plus, there is a shelf life issue."
It has not been determined how many mills are bleaching flour with
chorine oxide, but we do know the use of chlorides for bleaching
flour is considered an industry standard.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) defines
<http://proliberty.com/observer/20050718.htm>chlorine gas as a
flour-bleaching, aging and oxidizing agent that is a powerful
irritant, dangerous to inhale, and lethal. Other agents also used
include oxides of nitrogen, nitrosyl, and benzoyl peroxide mixed with
various chemical salts.
The chlorine gas undergoes an oxidizing chemical reaction with some
of the proteins in the flour, producing alloxan as an unintended
byproduct. Bair and other milling industry leaders claim that
bleaching and oxidizing agents don't leave behind harmful residues in
flour, although they can cite no studies or published data to confirm this.
Why Bleaching Makes White Flour Even Worse
It has been shown that alloxan is a byproduct of the flour bleaching
process, the process they use to make flour look so "clean" and --
well, white. No, they are technically not adding alloxan to the flour
-- although you will read this bit of misinformation on the Internet.
But, they are doing chemical treatments to the grain that result in
the formation of alloxan in the flour.
With so little food value already in a piece of white bread, now
there is potentially a chemical poison lurking in there as well.
So what is so bad about alloxan?
Alloxan, or C4 H2O4N2, is a product of the decomposition of uric
acid. It is a poison that is used to produce diabetes in healthy
experimental animals (primarily rats and mice), so that researchers
can then study diabetes "treatments" in the lab. Alloxan causes
diabetes because it spins up enormous amounts of free radicals in
pancreatic beta cells, thus destroying them.
Beta cells are the primary cell type in areas of your pancreas called
islets of Langerhans, and they produce insulin; so if those are
destroyed, you get diabetes.
There is no other commercial application for alloxan -- it is used
exclusively in the medical research industry because it is so highly toxic.
Given the raging epidemic of diabetes and other chronic diseases in
this country, can you afford to be complacent about a toxin such as
this in your bread, even if it is present in small amounts?
Just How Much is Too Much?
Similar to disinfection byproducts (DBPs) in water, alloxan is formed
when the chlorine reacts with certain proteins remaining in the white
flour after the bran and germ have been removed. Protein makes up
between 5 percent and 15 percent of white flour, depending on whether
it's cake flour, or high-gluten flour, such as what's used for pizza
crust or bagels.
So, this would suggest that perhaps 5 to 15 grams of protein per 100
grams of flour could be contaminated.
However, according to Professor Joe Schwarcz, Director of the McGill
University Office of Science and Society, alloxan is the byproduct of
xantophyll oxidation only.
<http://oss.mcgill.ca/everyday/alloxan.pdf>Xantophylls are yellow
compounds in wheat that react with oxygen, causing flour to turn white.
According to Mr. Schwarcz:
"One of the possible minor side products of xantophyll oxidation is
alloxan. It may therefore be found in small amounts in flour. There
is no available research that shows trace amounts are a problem or
that alloxan builds up in the body. The amounts, if present at all,
must be small because xantophylls themselves only occur to the extent
of 1 microgram per gram of flour."
Alloxan has not been studied in terms of human exposure, particularly
long-term. There is just so much we don't know, and you know what
assumptions will get you.
Alloxan in Rats vs Alloxan in Humans
Scientists have long known that alloxan produces selective
destruction of the beta cells of the pancreas, causing hyperglycemia
and ketoacidosis in laboratory animals. Alloxan is structurally
similar to glucose, which might explain why the pancreatic beta cells
selectively take it up.
According to Dr. Hari Sharma's Freedom from Disease, alloxan causes
free radical damage to DNA in the beta cells of the pancreas, causing
them to malfunction and die. When they fail to function normally,
they no longer produce enough insulin.
Even though the toxic effect of alloxan is common scientific
knowledge in the research community, the Food and Drug Administration
(FDA) still allows companies to use chemical processes in which the
end result is toxic food. Until they unequivocally prove something is
toxic by way of human deaths, severe side effects, or when the public
screams loudly enough, the FDA is not likely to protect you.
Until then, it is you who must protect yourself.
If you have diabetes, or cancer, have a compromised immune system, or
if you are in some other high-risk category as tens of millions of
North Americans are, you need to know what foods contain hazardous
ingredients so you can avoid them. But in the case of alloxan,
<http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2006/08/347999.html>there is no way
to know, either by reading the ingredient list or by any other means,
that it might be in your food!
History of Bleaching Flour -- Pillsbury and the FDA
An interesting sideline to this whole flour story lies in the origins
of the FDA.
Bleaching and oxidizing agents weren't developed to produce quick
aging of wheat flour (within 48 hours) until the early 1900s. Prior
to that, it required several months for oxygen to condition flour naturally.
When bleaching was introduced, it was vehemently opposed.
The first major consumer advocate was Harvey W. Wiley, MD, who
eventually became known as the "Father of the Pure Food and Drugs
Act" of 1906. Mr. Wiley was head of the Bureau of Chemistry, which
was the precursor to the FDA. Wiley crusaded against benzoic acid,
sulfites, saccharin, and bleached flour, among other food additives
and adulterants.
Dr. Wiley felt so strongly about preventing the bleaching of flour
that he took it all the way to the Supreme Court. They ruled that
flour could not be bleached or "adulterated" in any way. However, it
was never enforced.
Wiley believed that foods posed a greater risk to the public than
adulterated or misbranded drugs. He constantly butted heads with
Secretary of Agriculture James Wilson and President Roosevelt over
food regulation.
Soon, Wiley's personal administrative authority was undercut when
Wilson created the Board of Food and Drug Inspection in 1907 and the
Referee Board of Consulting Scientific Experts in 1908, one of which
was reportedly headed by someone who had been working at Pillsbury,
although I have not been able to verify this addendum.
Finally, in 1912, Dr. Wiley quit as director out of frustration,
although he continued as a vocal consumer advocate for many years.
The government replaced Dr. Wiley with Dr. Elmer Nelson. Dr. Nelson
was the polar opposite to Wiley , and was quoted as saying:
"It is wholly unscientific to state that a well-fed body is more able
to resist disease than a poorly fed body. My overall opinion is that
there hasn't been enough experimentation to prove that dietary
deficiencies make one susceptible to disease."
Therein lies the foundation of the FDA. Since Dr. Wiley resigned, the
FDA has continued to shift its focus on drugs, since Wiley was never
able to convince the government of the dangers from chemicals in our
foods. He was truly a pioneer and a century ahead of his time!
Food For Thought
The important point to take away is, beware of any processed food
because chemicals are always used. And we simply don't know what the
long-term effects will be of ingesting chemicals, on top of
chemicals, on top of more chemicals.
Strive to stick to whole unprocessed foods that are as close to their
natural state as possible. If you're going to eat grains, make sure
they are at the least unbleached, whole, and organic, and eat them in
the proportion that is best for your nutritional type.
<*}}}>< <http://www.holypostage.com/>Custom Faith-based U.S. Postage <*}}}><
<*}}}>< <http://www.holypostage.com/theblog/join-the-network/>The
Network Directory <*}}}><
<*}}}>< <http://astore.amazon.com/halthekin-20>Catholic on Amazon
<*}}}>< <*}}}><
<http://www.halfthekingdom.org/on+allposters+today.html>on AllPosters
today <*}}}><
+
<*}}}>< <http://www.holypostage.com/>Holy Postage <*}}}><
<*}}}><<http://www.halfthekingdom.org/>Half the
<http://www.halfthekingdom.org/>Kingdom!<*}}}><
+ "The fruit of abortion is nuclear war" - Bl. Mother Teresa +
<*}}}>< <http://www.holypostage.com/>Custom Faith-based U.S. Postage <*}}}><
<*}}}>< <http://www.holypostage.com/theblog/join-the-network/>The
Network Directory <*}}}><
<*}}}>< <http://astore.amazon.com/halthekin-20>Catholic on Amazon
<*}}}>< <*}}}><
<http://www.halfthekingdom.org/on+allposters+today.html>on AllPosters
today <*}}}><
+
<*}}}>< <http://www.holypostage.com/>Holy Postage <*}}}><
<*}}}><<http://www.halfthekingdom.org/>Half the
<http://www.halfthekingdom.org/>Kingdom!<*}}}><
+ "The fruit of abortion is nuclear war" - Bl. Mother Teresa +
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
Please note that I do not send or open attachments sent to this list.
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"Catholics on Fire" group.
To post to this group, send email to [email protected]
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
[email protected]
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/Catholics-on-Fire
May the blessing of Jesus and our Blessed Mother be with you
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
