From corn to flake: Health-promoting phenolic acids lost during food processing

For many Americans, highly processed foods are on the menu for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Even when the raw materials—grains, for example—are high in vitamins and health-promoting phenolic compounds, processing can rob the final product of these nutrients. In a set of recent studies, University of Illinois scientists reveal what happens to cancer-fighting phenolic acids in corn when it is processed into cornflakes.