Cereal grains processing studies

It has long been established that ochratoxin can be transferred to body fluids and eggs. Important ochratoxin-contaminated foods, in which the effects of processing have been studied, are cereals and coffee. Delay in drying grain after harvesting results in an increase of ochratoxin. 

Cereals are an important protein source and are processed into bread, pasta and noodles, breakfast cereals, and fermented drink. For all these applications the quality is determined, to a greater or lesser extent, by the gluten proteins which account for about half of the total grain nitrogen. There are also opportunities to develop novel uses for cereal proteins in both the food and nonfood indns-tries. It is important to study the wheat gluten proteins, particularly the deamidated SWP (soluble wheat protein) in relation to their structure and function. 

Fruit and vegetable fiber has been consistently associated with a lower risk of colon cancer, but the relationship with cereal fiber is less clear. However, whole grain cereals appear to be protective—a further anomaly in the relationships between plant foods and disease risk. These discrepancies may be in the process of resolution. First, it seems that the early observational data were confounded by the analytical technologies available, and the perception that native populations consuming unrefined diets had high fiber intakes is incorrect. It seems likely that they ate relatively little fiber but had high intakes of RS. Population studies have shown a protective effect of apparent RS intake and colorectal cancer risk. The word apparent is pivotal because there is currently no accepted method for RS determination and thus, there are no reliable data on dietary intakes. There are also issues regarding the intakes of dietary fiber and cancer risk. Part of the problem inherent in the study of colonic cancer is that, in contrast to CHD (in which there are easily measurable risk markers such as plasma cholesterol that can be modified by diet), the only indices for colon cancer are not easily measurable ... 

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