Do you like having cornflakes for breakfast? It may not be the best breakfast option after all. Research has revealed that the cancer-fighting phenolics in corn are lost when they are processed. A team of researchers from the University of Illinois conducted a set of studies to determine what happens to cancer-fighting phenolic acids in corn when they are processed.

For the study, which was published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, the research team created cornflakes from nine corn genotypes with different phenolic content. They did this in order to determine if high amounts of ferulic acid and p-coumaric acid in the corn kernel can be carried over and translated to greater amounts in the end product.