Reblogging this from Bob and Bonnie Horning. This article contains what I consider vital information on what we eat a lot of in our society..white flour and how it is made and the toxins and toxic process by which it is made. Do you and your family a favor…read all of this article and repost it everywhere you can.
Via Bob & Bonnie Horning (Homes and Land of Lancaster County):
Today I’m on my 2nd day of a 3 day fast and find this subject rather difficult to write about. There is a food that most of us consume that is so bad for us that some countries have outlawed it’s use. It’s bleached white flour… and most of what’s sold in the stores is also “enriched”. Enriched? That sounds good doesn’t it? Not when you see what they enrich it with.
All white bread is made with bleached white flour as are most of the baking projects we bake in our kitchens. Bleached flour which is how it becomes white is not bad the way it used to be made. The only way to bleach flour without using toxic materials is to spread it out and let the sun do it’s job for a few days. But that’s not how our bleached flour is made in our grocery stores that process would take too long and cost too much.
EVER WONDER HOW WHITE FLOUR WAS MADE?
Commercial wheat production is a study in pesticide application. Not only are the starting seeds treated with fungicide, the growing wheat is sprayed with hormones such as cycocel to influence production. More pesticides are added in the field, as the growing season progresses. After the harvesting of the wheat is done, the wheat grain or “berries” are stored in bins which have been coated with insecticides. If any bugs are still hanging around at that point, the farmer will then fumigate the grain.
It is from this pesticide soaked grain that commercial flour is made.
Once the milling process starts, more damage is inflicted. A wheat grain kernel is composed of three layers: the bran, the germ, and the endosperm layer. The bran is the outside layer where most of the fiber exists. Most of the nutrients and fats are in germ layer. The endosperm is the starchy middle layer.
The natural nutrition associated with whole grains exists only when these three layers are eaten together. Old time stone mills ground the flour slowly, and the resulting flour had all three layers mixed in. (This result is called “100 percent stone-ground whole-wheat flour”).
But in mass production flour mills, stone grinding isn’t efficient enough, so high speed, high temperature steel roller mills are used.
These high speed mills remove the bran and germ, and the resulting flour is made up of mostly the starchy endosperm layer.
Ironically, much of the bran and germ “waste product”, which is the most nutritious part of the grain, is sold as animal feed.
The resulting white flour contains just a fraction of the nutrients of the original grain, with the heat of the steel rollers also playing a role in the nutrient destruction.
THEN COMES THE WHITENING EFFECT- Bleached flour is just that… bleached.
Chlorine and Alloxan
Bleaching flour started in the early 1900s and was vehemently opposed. In 1906, government passed the Pure Food and Drug Act which prohibiting the interstate transportation and sale of adulterated food. The act defined adulterated food as that which is combined or packaged with another substance that adversely affects the quality or strength of the food; is substituted in whole or part by another substance; has had any essential component removed in whole or part; has been blended, coated, colored, or stained to conceal damage or inferiority; or has had poisonous or harmful additions made to it.
The legality of bleached flour went to the Supreme Court in 1910. At that time chlorine dioxide was not being used but nitrates. In 1914 “the Supreme Court rules in U.S. v. Lexington Mill & Elevator Company against USDA because the government has not shown a connection between nitrite residues in the bleached flour and the harm to humans that the residues were alleged to cause. While the Court is sympathetic to the Bureau of Chemistry’s efforts to protect the public from nitrites, it nonetheless states that the government had to show some relationship between the nitrite residues left in the flour and the harm it is capable of producing in humans. The Court states that the mere presence of such an ingredient is not sufficient to make a food illegal. After the case is settled, bleached flour is allowed in interstate commerce as long as it does not conceal damaged flour and is clearly labeled as “bleached flour”.
The flour manufacturers then subject the starchy flour to a chlorine gas bath.
The flour manufacturers use a form of chlorine gas to bleach and artificially “age” flour. The goal, of course, is a clean, white product. The chlorine gas reacts with the flour, oxidizing, whitening it and reducing the gluten.
But it also converts an dough additive called xanthine into a toxic substance called alloxan. The alloxan is an unintended byproduct.
So what is alloxan? Alloxan is a toxin which destroys pancreatic islet cells, resulting in diabetes. In fact, Alloxin is specifically used in research labs to induce diabetes in rats and mice for study purposes.
After the chlorine bath, we get nice, white flour completely devoid of any natural vitamins. And since all the natural vitamins have been destroyed, the bleached flour is mixed with synthetic vitamin and mineral supplements to “enrich” it. These synthetic vitamins are made from petroleum, elemental ores, bacteria, fungi, and ferrous iron, which is created from sulfate refined out of high sulfur crude oil.
ARE YOU SICK IN THE STOMACH YET? Here’s the kicker… Bleached White Flour Was Supposed to Be Outlawed. It is in Great Britain.
What can you do? One of the breads we consume the most in our home is Ezekiel Bread. It’s an actual recipe very close to what, as the name implies, was made in the old days before processing began. It really doesn’t taste like regular bread though. But short of switching to millet and whole grain type breads, you can look for organic whole grain breads. They are more of a beautique type of bread and will cost more no doubt. You can look for “Unbleached flour” or use whole wheat flour… milled by stone wheat flour is the best we can do in grocery stores. And I’ll warn you that wheat flour makes cookies and other baked goods taste different. Unbleached white flour is definitely a step in the right direction though to stay a little more healthy.
Although there’s much good fiber in breads the majority of bread just turn to sugar inside our bodies and should be kept to a minimum. Michael Geary, a food and finess expert once said that the well known food pyramid, the one they teach in our public schools would be better if turned upside down…. meaning the largest portions should be the top and the lowest portions should be the bottom… you really want to be healthy. That’s keeping the sweets, fats and oils to a minimum as well.
