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I know what you're thinking: What's the big deal about milk and cereal in a minute? I can do it in less than that with my boxed cereal, and lower my cholesterol, too. At least that's what it says on the box. Well, my friend therein lies the irony. If you're really wanting to lower your cholesterol, you need to stop eating processed cereals and pasteurized/homogenized milk, (among other things,) and start eating food the way nature designed it. In fact, when it comes to boxed cereal, you'd be better off eating the box.
Let's review the basic process. First we take a relatively good grain source, like oats; we cook them to death, add a bunch of sugar, salt, artificial flavorings and/or coloring, and preservatives, and some other stuff we can't pronounce. Then we'll squeeze it through an extruder to turn this paste into a "fun" shape that kids can be enticed to eat, (or use for potty training.) Then we'll bake it on a conveyor belt, after which we'll spray about eight synthetic vitamins and minerals (to replace the 24 - 32 that we just rendered useless by heating it twice) that no living being on earth can possibly assimilate, and call it fortified.
It's a little damp now, from the sprayed on fake nutrients, so we'll have to send that same conveyor belt through a thousand degree oven to crisp it so it will stay crunchy in milk, (or toilet water,) which inherently makes things soggy and soft. Even if the spray-on vitamins were nutritionally useful, they sure won't be after their little trip through cereal hell, but we can list them on the box as nutrients, so it's all good.
Okay, so basically what we have now are really fun shapes we can use to toilet train little boys and bribe little girls, that is starchy, sweet, chemical laden and crunchy. But, it tastes pretty good and that will satisfy some emotional need for most people, even if it does leave their bodies wondering: "Where's the food?"
Well, alright. So cereal in a box is essentially artery-clogging cholesterol-producing gunk, but at least it can be a carrier for the good nutritious milk. Wrong again. Let's see: first we take a perfectly good milk-producing animal, a dairy cow, and shove it in a stockyard or milking barn with a whole bunch of other cows to where they can barely move. (This saves space.) Since we're depriving them of grassy pastureland, which is their natural food, we'll give them livestock feed from transgenic corn and soy - not their natural food; (and in really bad situations, processed beef by products, which turns them into cannibals and causes mad cow disease - definitely NOT their natural food). Because they're so ill fed and cramped, they tend to get sick, so we better give them plenty of anti-biotics to keep their immune systems artificially boosted.
Meantime, we will pay no attention to the fact that cows naturally only produce milk to feed their own offspring - calves, which are conspicuously absent, but are soon to appear in your grocer's meat department as veal. Okay, never mind that part. Let's get back to the transgenic feed with the humanly engineered unpredictable genetic material that has resulted in really fun things like cancer, sterility, or anomalous oral hair growth in lab animals. (Don't worry about that last one, though. That only happened to hamsters in Russia.) Also, let's inject the cows with still another humanly engineered transgenic growth hormone to keep them producing milk even though they have no calves to feed.
Now, let's take this tainted milk supply and cook the crap out of it (literally, because otherwise it's teaming with mutated forms of E.coli.) Then, because people don't like cream at the top of their milk, and because the FDA says so, we'll homogenize it and break up the milk fat molecules into such small globules that human gallbladders and livers, one of whose function is to break down and assimilate fats, can't even recognize it. That way all those fat molecules can collect in the intestines and cause lower digestive disorders including, but not limited to colitis, irritable bowel syndrome, and cancer.
Oh, and did I mention that because of the high temperature pasteurization any nutrients that might have been in the milk are now totally dead and useless? Okay, so we'd better put back some nutrients. Oh, forget it. There are too many. Let's just put in some synthetic Vitamin D and call the milk fortified, too. What? You only buy organic milk?
HA! Fooled you again. We take that nice grass fed cows' milk and cook the dickens out of it, too. That's because the FDA says we have to because even though certified raw milk is far cleaner than regular pasteurized milk, it might some day make someone sick. It seems the only way to keep people from getting sick is to provide them with no nutritious foods at all. Oh, and we also homogenize it, because even a lot of you organic greenies don't like shaking up your milk before you drink it. And also because the FDA says we have to because that's just how milk should look.
Okay, so back to the other stuff. Now we have to get all this tainted toxic milk to market without breaking the containers, so we'll put it in plastic jugs that leach BPA's into the milk. That way, children and adults alike can experience the benefits of anti-nutritious food on a regular basis and thereby earn membership into the sacred state religion: modern medicine. If they're really lucky, they may even gain entrance into the holy of holies, a hospital operating room.
If you're somewhat less enthusiastic about that 30 second milk and cereal you were formerly so fond of, you may want to consider taking just another 30 - 60 seconds to get some real food into your body. All the goodness of oats that the cereal companies brag on does exist, but only in its organic whole form, which, as we've discovered, is NOT what is in the box you buy at the grocery store. The whole oat grain is called oat groats. It is available from bulk food providers, co-ops, and health food stores. Pound for pound, it is far less expensive than that processed box of pee targets for boy toddlers.
Okay, so here are the Five Easy Steps:
You will need a blender, food processor, or optimally, a VitaMix; a wire mesh sieve or some other equivalent; a pitcher, and a small sauce pot. You will also need 1-2 cups of whole oat groats, about a TBS of raw unfiltered honey, Madagascar vanilla, a pat of butter, and natural sea salt.
Step one: put 2 cups of oat groats in the food processor or VitaMix. 1 cup if you have a regular blender.
Step two: add raw unfiltered honey to taste, (I like about a tablespoon,) and a dash or "glug" of Madagascar vanilla, (depending on how much you like vanilla.)
Step three: add water to the highest fill mark on your blending device and turn on high (starting at low and going to high) for 2 minutes in a blender or food processor; 1 minute in a VitaMix. (Do you just have to have one, yet?)
Step four: pour the contents of your device's container through the sieve and into the pitcher. What's in the pitcher is the oat milk. It will keep refrigerated for up to 3 days - longer if you add a drop of food grade hydrogen peroxide.
Step five: Put the contents of the sieve into the small sauce pot and set your burner to its lowest setting. Add one pat of butter and warm only until butter is melted. Add back some of the oat milk if you like a creamier smoother texture. Stir continuously unless you have some of that really great waterless cookware that heats evenly on all sides of the pan and the lid. DO NOT BOIL or heat above 106 degrees, and for the love of Mike, DON'T microwave it. You should be able to put your finger in the cereal without burning your finger. Remove from heat when butter is melted and add sea salt to taste. (Never heat salt!)
There. Now you have a truly nutritious warm breakfast with all the health benefits of whole raw food: live enzymes, vitamins, minerals, and even some electrolytes and trace elements. The nutrients in raw unfiltered honey alone could sustain you almost indefinitely. Isn't that worth an extra minute or two of your time? AND...this cereal tastes way better than a box.
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