Cap'n Crunch: You need to keep this cereal off your kid’s bowl
Written by Ajay Chohan, Founder
Cap'n Crunch Peanut Butter Crunch - Quaker Oats Company
Why the Cap’n Crunch product labeling is misleading: A cereal full of harmful additives like artificial coloring & BHT, and made via the toxic extrusion process, contradicts the safe smiling grandpa image meant to allure kids
Harmful Ingredients in Cap’n Crunch: BHT, Caramel color, Added Sugar
Harmful Cereal Making Process used by Cap’n Crunch: Extrusion
From the high temperature process used to produce Cap’n Crunch to the harmful preservatives and synthetic coloring present; there are a lot of questions consumers need to be asking of the Cap’n. Let’s first understand the harmful extrusion process used in making this cereal.
Cap’n Crunch and extrusion - grains turned into puffed & denatured toxic proteins:
The way food is made and processed, is equally as important as the ingredients themselves. The fluffy cereal shapes of Cap’n Crunch are created via a process called extrusion. In this, the extruder takes the slurry of corn grain through extremely high pressure and temperatures and emits it on the other end out of tiny holes in the form of various fluffy shapes.
This process changes the very nature of the grain & the proteins, making the denatured proteins toxic and harmful to our nervous system! (1). Extrusion similarly destroys the fatty and amino acids in grains. According to Paul Stitt, author of Fighting the Food Giants, rats who were fed extruded cereal died faster than those who were starved and only given water! (1) Simply put, puffed cereal is toxic and bad for you.
Please Note:
Here is my article on the 3 wholesome and alive breakfast alternatives to the processed cereal, And:
Here is the complete guide to all the 7 unhealthy additives commonly found across breakfast cereals + my complete list of the worst cereal brands to avoid.
Cap’n Crunch is loaded with additives & harmful synthetic chemicals with links to obesity and potentially cancer.
Getting into the ingredients, the cereal has its share of harmful ones. Starting with the preservative Butylated Hydroxytoluene (BHT), several studies indicate that BHT may cause cancer in rats, while other studies have found it safe, according to the University of California at Los Angeles publication "What Food Additives Add" (2). Due to questions on its safety, the US FD&A is currently reviewing BHT added in foods (2). What’s this preservative doing in our cereal anyways? BHT is an antioxidant that gives processed foods a longer shelf life by preventing bacteria and mold growth. BHT also has industrial uses in petroleum products and jet fuel - not something we want ingesting with our cereal!
Similar to other cereals like Reese’s Puffs, Cap’n Crunch contains Caramel Color. This synthetic color is made “by reacting sugars with ammonia and sulfites under high pressure and temperatures…which in government-conducted studies caused lung, liver, or thyroid cancer or leukemia in laboratory mice or rats” (3). Yikes. It is not worth having a potential cancer causing carcinogen in your cereal just to give it some color.
Cap’n Crunch rounds this toxic cereal by making it high in sugar and low in fiber. High amount of added sugars are a recipe for obesity and added sugar is the second primary ingredient in Cap’n Crunch! We don’t want to be feeding our family something that can contribute to obesity and other conditions such as diabetes.
Cap’n Crunch is bad for you and a worse breakfast choice:
So the next time we ask ourselves if Cap’n Crunch is gluten free or vegan, an equally important question to ask is, is this cereal toxic? And even if it’s technically below the FDA’s toxicity guidelines, another important question then is, is this cereal nourishing for my body? Because if it is not — and Cap’n Crunch is not — why are we feeding this to our kids or ourselves?
What makes a better breakfast?
Foods we eat should be wholesome and alive. This starts with a rich soil! The soil should be nutrient dense and the ecosystem biodiverse. Whole grains should be the only or primary ingredient — which should then only be minimally processed and never extruded. And the breakfast that reaches our bowl needs to be absolutely free of cheap additives, which often go hand in hand with ultra-processed foods. You can read my article here for quick yet healthy + tasty substitutes to eating overly processed cereal, from producers mindful of the entire food journey.
Is (or was) Cap’n Crunch part of your breakfast routine? Share your thoughts below!
Sources - Research for Yourself!
2. https://healthyeating.sfgate.com/cereals-unhealthy-3637.html