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Channel 7 TODAY TONIGHT   Story On Selenium

Magic bread
REPORTER: Vassil Malandris
BROADCAST DATE: November 3, 2006

Bread containing selenium

A South Australian company has started making bread using a once common mineral that tests have shown can help with a variety of health concerns.
A South Australian company has started making bread using a once common mineral that tests have shown can help with a variety of health concerns.
According to research selenium can benefit health issues ranging from skin blemishes to cancer.
Tests have shown that the mineral reduces the incidence of prostate cancer by an incredible 52 per cent.
Selenium has been around since the dawn of time yet very few Australians know anything about the now rare mineral.
A naturally occurring mineral, selenium used to be found in soil and plants in high quantities.
Modern farming methods, including the use of fertiliser and over-farming have stared destroying the healing mineral.
Adelaide researcher Dr Graham Lyons had been studying the health benefits of selenium for several years and thought the public should know about the health benefits of the mineral as soon as possible.
Dr Lyons had difficulty convincing farmers to add selenium back into the soil, and therefore back into our diets, until he met Mark Laucke.
Mark Laucke, Managing Director of the Laucke flour mill in Strathalbyn , South Australia , says he thought the idea was better than sliced bread, so he started adding selenium to sliced bread and other organic products.
"We were quite amazed that such a wonderful natural mineral could become available," said Mr Laucke.
"It's of interest or it should be to virtually everyone on the planet, there are enormous health benefits in this product"
While selenium is increasingly becoming a rare commodity, scientists such as Dr Lyons are discovering that it is effective in fighting everything from acne to advanced cancers.
"The vital function of selenium is only now finally being discovered slowly, and so much of the health benefits have only been recognised in the last several years, so this is really quite new. It's actually breaking ground," said Dr Lyons.
"Prostate cancer was shown to be reduced by 52 per cent in a quite a big study in America in recent years. It can also be effective against colon cancer and breast cancer, but prostate is the big one," added Lyons.



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Mark Laucke says the Laucke mill wanted to keep the mineral in as unrefined a state as possible so that it its benefits could be of most effect.
"We decided that we really wanted to incorporate natural selenium into natural food, so that humans could then digest and their metabolism could take advantage of selenium in the way that it's always been taken advantage of".
Selenium can also be found in fish, brazil nuts, rice and herbal supplements.
Just two slices of Laucke’s bread for women or six slices for men every day will provide all your dietary selenium requirements.
Any more than the recommended amount according to some critics can be dangerous if not fatal.
However, Dr Lyons disagrees.
"...That applies to anything, if you have too much water you can kill yourself, I think to a degree it's been overplayed, there are very few deaths in the literature due to selenium."
"If you looked at something like aspirin which is a pretty benign drug, that probably kills thousands of people around the world every year".
Mark Laucke says it did take some time for him to be swayed over the benefits of the mineral.
"The more information I sought finally then convinced me that yes, this is not some snake oil charmer solution. This is real and deliverable and that's why we're doing it".