Ingredients On A Cereal Box

Cereal

Background

Breakfast cereal is a candy food manufactured from grain and intended to exist eaten as a main course served with milk during the morning meal. Some breakfast cereals require brief cooking, just these hot cereals are less popular than common cold, ready-to-swallow cereals.

Prehistoric peoples footing whole grains and cooked them with h2o to form gruels and porridges similar to today's hot cereals. Common cold cereals did not develop until the second half of the nineteenth century.

Set-to-eat breakfast cereals were invented because of religious beliefs. The first footstep in this management was taken past the American clergyman Sylvester Graham, who advocated a vegetarian diet. He used unsifted, coarsely basis flour to invent the Graham cracker in 1829. Influenced past Graham, Seventh-24-hour interval Adventists, who also believed in vegetarianism, founded the Western Health Reform Constitute in Battle Creek, Michigan, in the 1860s. At this institute, later known equally the Battle Creek Sanitarium, physician John Harvey Kellogg invented several grain-based meat substitutes.

In 1876 or 1877, Kellogg invented a nutrient he chosen granola from wheat, oats, and corn that had been mixed, baked, and coarsely ground. In 1894, Kellogg and his blood brother Westward. K. Kellogg invented the first precooked flaked cereal. They cooked basis wheat into a dough, then flattened information technology betwixt metal rollers and scraped it off with a pocketknife. The resulting flakes were then cooked once more and allowed to correspond several hours. This product was sold by mail order as Granose for 15 cents per x-ounce (284 g) package.

Both W. M. Kellogg and C. West. Post, a patient at the sanitarium, founded businesses to sell such products as wellness foods. Their success led dozens of imitators to open up factories in Battle Creek between 1900 and 1905. These businesses apace failed, while Kellogg and Post however survive as thriving manufacturers of breakfast cereals.

Their success can be partially attributed to advertising campaigns, which transformed the image of their products from health foods to quick, convenient, and tasty breakfast foods. Some other cistron was the fact that Kellogg and Mail service both manufactured corn flakes, which turned out to be much more popular than wheat flakes. Breakfast cereals accept connected to increment in popularity in the twentieth century. Ready-to-swallow breakfast cereals are served in nine out of x American households.

Raw Materials

The nigh important raw material in any breakfast cereal is grain. The grains near commonly used are corn, wheat, oats, rice, and barley. Some hot cereals, such as plain oatmeal, and a few cold cereals, such as plain shredded wheat, contain no other ingredients. Most breakfast cereals contain other ingredients, such as salt, yeast, sweeteners, flavoring agents, coloring agents, vitamins, minerals, and preservatives.

The sweeteners used in breakfast cereals include malt (obtained from barley), white sugar, brownish carbohydrate, and corn syrup. Some natural cereals are sweetened with concentrated fruit juice. A wide diverseness of flavors may be added to breakfast cereals, including chocolate, cinnamon and other spices, and fruit flavors. Other ingredients added to

Cereal

meliorate flavor include basics, dried fruit, and marshmallows.

Vitamins and minerals are oftentimes added to breakfast cereals to replace those lost during cooking. The about important of these is vitamin B-i, 90 % of which is destroyed by heat. The antioxidants BHA and BHT are the preservatives almost often added to breakfast cereals to forestall them from becoming dried and rancid.

The Manufacturing
Process

Preparing the grain

1 Grain is received at the cereal factory, inspected, and cleaned. It may exist used in the class of whole grains or it may require farther processing. Oftentimes the whole grain is crushed between big metal rollers to remove the outer layer of bran. It may then be basis more finely into flour.
2 Whole grains or partial grains (such every bit corn grits) are mixed with flavoring agents, vitamins, minerals, sweeteners, salt, and water in a large rotating pressure cooker. The time, temperature, and speed of rotation vary with the blazon of grain existence cooked.
3 The cooked grain is moved to a conveyor belt, which passes through a drying oven. Enough of the water remains in the cooked grain to outcome in a soft, solid mass which can be shaped as needed.
4 If flour is used instead of grains, it is cooked in a cooking extruder. This device consists of a long screw inside a heated housing. The motion of the spiral mixes the flour with water, flavorings, salt, sweeteners, vitamins, minerals, and sometimes nutrient coloring. The screw moves this mixture through the extruder, cooking it as it moves along. At the end of the extruder, the cooked dough emerges equally a ribbon. A rotating knife cuts the ribbon into pellets. These pellets are so candy in much the same way every bit cooked grains.

Making flaked cereals

five The cooked grains are allowed to absurd for several hours, stabilizing the wet content of each grain. This process is known every bit tempering. The tempered grains are flattened between large metal rollers under tons of pressure. The resulting flakes are conveyed to ovens where they are tossed in a blast of very hot air to remove remaining moisture and to toast them to a desirable color and flavor. Instead of cooked grains, flakes may likewise be fabricated from extruded pellets in a similar style.

Making puffed cereals

half dozen Cereals may exist puffed in ovens or in so-called "guns." Oven-puffed cereals are commonly made from rice. The rice is cooked, cooled, and dried. It is then rolled between metal rollers like flaked cereals, merely it is only partially flattened. This process is known equally bumping. The bumped rice is stale again and placed in a very hot oven which causes information technology to swell.
7 Gun-puffed cereals may be made from rice or wheat. The rice grains require no pretreatment, but the wheat grains must be treated to partially remove the outer layer of bran. This may be done by abrading it off betwixt grindstones, a process known every bit pearling. Information technology may as well be done by soaking the wheat grains in salt water. The common salt water toughens the bran, which allows it to suspension off in large pieces during puffing. The grain is placed in the gun, a pocket-sized vessel which tin hold very hot steam and very high pressure. The gun is opened quickly to reduce the pressure suddenly, which puffs the grain. Extruded pellets can also exist used to make gun-puffed cereals in the aforementioned way equally grains.

Making shredded cereals

8 Shredded cereals are usually made from wheat. The wheat is cooked in boiling water to allow moisture to fully penetrate the grain. The cooked grain is cooled and allowed to temper. Information technology is and then rolled between 2 metal rollers. One roller is polish and the other is grooved. A metallic comb is positioned against the grooved roll with a molar inside each groove. The cooked grain is shredded by the teeth of the comb and drops off the rollers in a continuous ribbon. A conveyor belt catches the ribbons from several pairs of rollers and piles them up in layers. The layers of shredded wheat are cut to the proper size, then baked to the desired color and dryness. Shredded cereals may also be made in a similar way from extruded pellets.

Making other cereals

ix Cereals can be made in a broad variety of special shapes (circles, letters of the alphabet, etc.) with a cooking extruder. A die is added to the cease of the extruder which forms a ribbon of cooked dough with the desired cross-department shape. A rotating knife cuts the ribbon into pocket-sized pieces with the proper shape. These shaped pieces of dough are processed in a manner similar to puffing. Instead of completely puffing, nevertheless, the pieces aggrandize merely partially in order to maintain the special shape.
10 Granolas and similar products are made past mixing grain (usually oats) and other ingredients (basics, fruits, flavors, etc.) and cooking them on a conveyor chugalug which moves through an oven. The cooked mixture is and then crumbled to the desired size. Hot cereals are made by processing the grain as necessary (rolling or cutting oats, cracking wheat, or milling corn into grits) and partly cooking it and so the consumer can cook it quickly in hot h2o. Salt, sweeteners, flavors, and other ingredients may or may not be added to the partly cooked mixture.

Adding coatings

11 After shaping, the cereal may be coated with vitamins, minerals, sweeteners, flavors such equally fruit juices, food colors, or preservatives. Frosting is applied by spraying a thick, hot syrup of sugar on the cereal in a rotating drum. Equally it cools the syrup dries into a white layer of frosting.

Packaging

12 Some cereals, such as shredded wheat, are adequately resistant to harm from moisture. They may be placed directly into cardboard boxes or in cardboard boxes lined with plastic. Most cereals must be packaged in airtight, waterproof plastic bags inside cardboard boxes to protect them from spoiling.
13 An automated motorcar packages the cereal at a charge per unit of about 40 boxes per minute. The box is assembled from a flat sheet of cardboard, which has been previously printed with the desired pattern for the outside of the box. The lesser and sides of the box are sealed with a strong glue. The bag is formed from moisture-proof plastic and inserted into the box. The cereal fills the bag and the pocketbook is tightly sealed past heat. The top of the box is sealed with a weak glue which allows the consumer to open information technology easily. The completed boxes of cereal are packed into cartons which usually hold 12, 24, or 36 boxes and shipped to the retailer.

Quality Control

Every step in the manufacturing of breakfast cereal is carefully monitored for quality. Since cereal is a food intended for homo consumption, sanitation is essential. The machines used are made from stainless steel, which can be thoroughly cleaned and sterilized with hot steam. Grain is inspected for any foreign matter when it arrives at the factory, when it is cooked, and when information technology is shaped.

To ensure proper cooking and shaping, the temperature and moisture content of the cereal is constantly monitored. The content of vitamins and minerals is measured to ensure accurate nutrition information. Filled packages are weighed to ensure that the contents of each box is consistent.

In order to label boxes with an accurate shelf life, the quality of stored cereal is tested over time. In order to be able to monitor freshness over a reasonable menses of time, the cereals are subjected to higher than normal temperatures and humidities in gild to speed up the spoiling process.

The Future

Breakfast cereal engineering science has avant-garde greatly since its origins in the late nineteenth century. The latest innovation in the manufacture is the twin-spiral cooking extruder. The two rotating screws scrape each other clean every bit they rotate. This allows the dough to move more smoothly than in an extruder with only one screw. By using a twin-screw extruder, forth with computers to precisely command temperature and force per unit area, cereals that usually require about 24 hours to brand may be made in as little as 20 minutes.

Where to Learn More

Books

Bruce, Scott, and Bill Crawford. Cerealizing America: The Unsweetened Story of American Breakfast Cereal. Faber and Faber, 1995.

Fast, Robert B., and Elwood F. Caldwell, eds. Breakfast Cereals and How They Are Made. American Association of Cereal Chemists, 1990.

Periodicals

Dworetzky, Tom. "The Churn of the Screw." Discover, May 1988, pp. 28-29.

Fast, R. B. "Breakfast Cereals: Processed Grains for Human Consumption." Cereal Foods World, March 1987, pp. 241-244.

Other

Kellogg Company."How Kellogg's® Cereal is Fabricated." December four, 1996. http://kelloggs.com/booth/cereal.html (July ix, 1997).

— Rose Secrest