Classes of wheat common in North America

Five principle classes of wheat are commonly grown in North America:
Hard Red Winter 
This wheat is grown in large quantities. It has moderately high protein content and used for bread. Hard Red Winter Wheat mostly grown in the central and southern Great plain.

Soft Red Winter Wheat 
Used for cakes and pastries. This wheat grows in the eastern and southeastern states of United States.

Hard Red Spring Wheat 
This wheat has the highest protein content of North American wheat and is used for manufacturing bread. It grows mainly in northern Great Plains.

White Wheat 
This wheat is suitable for pastry flour. It grows in New York, Michigan and the Pacific Coast states.

Durum wheat  
Grow in North Dakota and other northern Plains states.  This is the hardest of the five wheat classes. It is for spaghetti
Classes of wheat common in North America

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Wild rice (Zizania spp.)

Wild rice, technically not a rice and since the era of paddy production mostly not wild, is the only cereal native to North America with well documented food uses. Wild rice has been a successfully crop in California because production economics have been favorable; the crop adapts easily to basins that have been used for production in the Sacramento Valley.

Wild rice is a grass belonging to the family Gramineae, the genus Zizania, and the species aquatica (or palustris). One can easily distinguish Zizania aquatica from Oryza sativa or common white rice, the Asian staple.

There are four species of wild rice:
Northern wild rice (Zizania palustris)
Wild rice (Zizania aquatica)
Texas wild rice (Zizania texana)
Manchurian wild rice (Zizania latifolia)

This wild rice has come into modern American diet as a delicious, though expensive, substitute for true rice. Or as an additive to give true rice a special flavor and texture.

Wild rice is primarily wind pollinated, a process that ensures genetic diversity through outcrossing, In addition, the plant has some capacity for self pollination.

It is an annual plant that grows form seed. Seed germination is evident when the coleoptiles that covers the leaves breaks through outer layer of the seed.

The stem diameter of the wild rice plant varies from ¼ to ½ inch. Internodes are hollow and divided by thin, porous partitions that allow the diffusion of gasses up and down the stem. Up to 50 additional secondary (tillers) can originate from the basal nodes.
Wild rice (Zizania spp.)

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What is ready-to-eat cereal?

Ready-to-eat cereals are designed to be eaten without cooking; hence, they are cooked at one of the stages in their processing.

They are produced from endosperm particles that are broken and ground into a mash, cooked and covered into flakes by squeezing the broken girts or mash between rollers.

Usually, they are then with added flavorings and other ingredients such as malt, syrups and heat stable vitamins, and minerals. Then, the cooked cereals are further processed by flaking, puffing shredding or other operations.

The early ready to eat cereals were wheat flakes, shredded wheat, Grape-Nuts, corn flakes, wheat/flax flakes.

Ready to eat cereals may be divided into categories of flaked shredded, directly shredded, oven puffed, gun puffed, microwave puff, and baked.

One study published in the Journal of Aging Research in 2012 noted that adults aged fifty five and older who ate ready-to-eat cereal had higher intakes of dietary fiber, whole grains and several vitamins and minerals than those who did not.

A growing body of breakfast research demonstrated that regular ready-to-eat cereal consumption is associated with more consistent body weight regulations, lower waist-to-height ratio, healthier BMI measures, smaller waist circumference, lower body fat, and improve blood lipid profiles.
A Canadian study that appeared in the Journal of Nutrition in 2013 found that eating breakfast- particularly when it included ready-to-eat cereal - was positively associated with better nutrient intake and nutrition status in adults.
What is ready-to-eat cereal?

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Popcorn production

Almost all of the popcorn consumed throughout the world in grown in the United States.

Popcorn is ideally harvested when the moisture content of the grain is about 17%. Unlike most of other grains, the outer hull of the popcorn kernel is both strong and impervious to moisture and the starch inside consists almost entirely of hard, dense type.

Once the grain is harvested, it is slowly dried using aeration and low heat. This slow drying, low heat method is used to avoid kernel breakage and damage while reducing the moisture content to about 13.5 to 14% which is ideal for popping.

The kernels of popcorn are smaller than flint corn. When heated rapidly, they turn the moisture in the kernel, which has a moisture-proof hull, into a superheated pressured steam.

The pressure continues to increase until the breaking point of the hull is reached: a pressure of about 135 psi and a temperature of 180 °C. This pressure burst the outer shell and the entire inside of the kernel puffs into a mass of flaky starch.

Upon popping, the volume is 25 to 30 times greater than original kernel.
Popcorn production 

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