Cereals or cereal? Grasses on our table


Kashi cereal - recognized as diet food, providing for human needs in complex carbohydrates, dietary fiber, amino acids and vitamins.

Packaged in bags of cereal to buy a modest stable, indicating the similarity of views nutritionists and consumers. However, except for cereals on the shelves of grocery departments in bright, eye-catching package, you can find products of their industrial processing - cereal and cereal quick cooking.


The ratio of buyers to the flakes more restrained than the traditional grain cereals. And in fact, differ whether the useful properties of cereal and cereal, cooked cereal out of the ordinary? After the initial product is the same - cereals.

Comparing the vitamin content in cereals and flakes can be concluded that in cereals are more. But no one eats corn raw. At home they must cook, fly or fry.

Heat treatment - general manufacturing operation in the production of any cereal. Raw materials - obshelushennye grains or cereals - or cooked in a sealed pot, or steamed thoroughly or mikroniziruetsya, processed infrared rays.

Micronization lasts only a few minutes, so the flakes are manufactured using this technology, retain vitamins and amino acids is much greater than porridge, cooked on the stove home cooking.

Softened and swollen in the heat treatment of croup crushes rolls and dried. As you can see - flakes, not requiring intensive cooking at home, very similar to the usual mess. And the pros and cons with them, in principle, the same.

In the process of production of most cereals is removed fruit and seed shell. Operation is necessary, but significantly reduces the content of "usefulness" in the final product. Croup with partial preservation of the envelope in the sale is not enough. As an example - brown rice.

In the manufacture of cereal can be used the same operations for the release of the shell, as in the production of cereals. But often the grain is not ripped off, and polished. As a result of the loss is much less due to the preservation of aleurone layer cells of which are located directly under the shell.

You can make up for losses in other ways, adding bran flakes cereal. This procedure is readily available at home, but how often it is used?

The highest concentration of biologically active substances in the embryo of cereals. Neither grain does not contain more embryos than are in the raw material - grains. But these flakes can be manufactured, and they are on sale. The embryos are selected weevil in the production of wheat flour and used as raw materials for wheat flakes.

In the production of flakes do not use any chemicals. In the end-product manufacturers often add dried or distilled fruit and vegetables, which appeals to many consumers.

Not without "spoon of tar". The general trend, which is subject to food-processing industry in recent years - the use of "flavors, flavorings. Look to the annotations on the package. "Porridge with pineapple" may well be "tainted". However, the taste and color ...

The choice between porridge cooked in the home and flakes - is not a choice between the products of more or less useful. As food they are very close. Differ only treatments, and as a result - material costs for the acquisition and loss of time for cooking.