The C word but its not about cancer

The connotation I want to engender when you hear the C word is the dark side of 'convenience'.
So many of the ills in this world occur because convenience rules. Whole philosophies by which food is packaged relates to this word and no where more so than breakfast cereals. I am particularly affected by this as it takes me some 10 minutes last thing at night to prepare my cereal breakfast -  fuzzy headed in the morning it would take 20 minutes at least plus the fact I use one or two certain ice cube preparation which need an  hour to melt - this can happily occur in the fridge overnight. I am not left off the hook in the morning either as the addition of raw jumbo oats and psyllium has to be carefully sequenced to make the whole thing palatable.

I shall discuss this breakfast later but it is on the convenience of the commercial breakfast cereals that is worth focussing.

Cornflakes, crispies of any sort, puffed cereals, bubbled rice - they all have the crunch which patently is really liked. But what does this crunch really mean. To get that experience the manufacturers have to heat the cereal to a really high temperature, not just to drive the natural water content off but to make brittle the cellulose fibre. Such treatment makes the cereal fracture and gives the crunch but the fibre content now is seriously altered to become starch or even actually sugar like. Naturally the nutrients like vitamins are affected and usually are replaced by addition later. In effect the best that can be said for such cereals is, that when they have had them added, their vitamin content. Along with the rush to get cereal down in the morning is the addition to them of milk and sugar - in fact as a kid the thing I liked best at the end of such bowl of cereal was the sweet milk that I captured lifting the bowl to one side!