The Better Breakfast: Cornflakes or Cardboard?

Aug 27, 2010 by Anna Migeon

When I visited my son at college this spring, I ate in the dining hall several times with him and some of his friends. Let’s just say that the dining hall food is nobody’s favorite thing about college at the University of Dallas.

Noticing that Hannah and Helen were eating cornflakes, I told them about some research that had been done on cornflake-eating rats.

This group of rats was given only cornflakes and water. A second group was given only the box the cornflakes had come in and water. A third group got rat food and water.

The rat food group did fine. The other two all died. But the rats who ate the box actually lived longer than the ones who ate cornflakes. The last cornflake-eating rat died on the same day the first box-eating rat died.

The box eaters only became lethargic and died of malnutrition. The cornflake eaters went into fits and convulsions before dying.

“But they don’t serve the boxes here,” protested Hannah.

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The cornflake research study and many other fascinating stories on food are reported in Sally Fallon‘s Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats