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Tag: cheerios

  • Cheerios Recall: Gluten-Free Boxes May Contain Wheat, Says General Mills

    If you recently purchased a box of “gluten-free” Cheerios, it may not actually be gluten-free.

    General Mills is “embarrassed and sorry” to have to recall approximately 1.8 million boxes of Cheerios and Honey Nut Cheerios.

    The Cheerios recall amount to several days of production, and is due to an “undeclared allergen – wheat”. General Mills says that some boxes marked “gluten-free” may, in fact, contain wheat after a flour mix-up.

    “Cheerios and Honey Nut Cheerios produced on [certain dates in July] at the company’s Lodi, California facility are being recalled because an isolated incident resulted in wheat flour being inadvertently introduced into the gluten free oat flour system at its Lodi facility. As a result, the products may contain an undeclared allergen – wheat – in products labeled as gluten-free,” says the company.

    “We want to reassure you that this was an isolated incident and we have implemented a solution to ensure that this will not happen again. The Cheerios and Honey Nut Cheerios produced at our other facilities are, and will continue to be, FDA compliant and gluten-free. We’ll also continue to test products and our oat flour supply extensively to ensure our products meet the gluten-free standard. We care about what you and your family eat and we are truly sorry for this mistake. We will work extremely hard to earn back your trust.”

    Check this graphic to find out if the box of Cheerios sitting in your pantry is affected:

    Screen Shot 2015-10-07 at 11.30.14 AM

    This recall only affects products sold in the US, not those distributed by General Mills Canada.

    The Food and Drug Administration says it received 125 complaints about the Cheerios before the voluntary recall.

  • Super Bowl Ad: Cheerios Shows Interracial Couple

    Back in May of 2013, a Cheerios commercial involving an interracial married couple sparked a lot of controversy, and caused many racists to head to YouTube to express their anger. But despite the big hub-bub, the makers of Cheerios, General Mills, said it was trying to show a realistic portrayal of a modern day American family, and the company said it didn’t regret making the ad or standing behind it.

    Now General Mills is making another statement with its latest ad, which features the same interracial couple and the adorable little girl, who’s received a lot of attention since the original ad aired.

    Part two of the commercial shows the dad character explaining that he and mom are going to have a new baby, and he uses individual cheerios to represent the number of people that will be in the family. “Hey Gracie, you know how our family has daddy and mommy,” he says to his daughter. “Pretty soon, you’re going to have a baby brother.”

    Gracie then uses the moment to do a little bit of negotiating, and tells her dad that she wants a puppy, which really surprises the mom character.

    The cute ad already has over 1 million views and will be one of this year’s Super Bowl commercials. After the original ad aired, Cheerios had to disable the YouTube comments due to racist feedback, but this time the comments section remained up, and it seems that most people like the commercial and have no problem with it what’s so ever.

    “When I heard about the ‘controversial’ advertisement, I went to watch it,” one person wrote. “I can’t see how any of these are considered bad. Mixed race couples are normal! I’m glad Cheerios has continued to use this family. It’s awesome. Forget the haters.”

    And based on the general buzz the commercial is getting, it looks like most people would agree.

    Image via YouTube

  • CheeriosTo Become GMO-Free, A Big Business Decision For General Mills

    With all of the controversy surrounding GMOs and the way they are used in food, some companies are starting to take notice, and are altering their products as a result, which should be able to help their business.

    People all over the country have been working to get foods labeled that contain GMO ingredients, and eventually be able to have them removed. In a movement that keeps growing, it is likely to be something that will be beneficial to both the business owner and the consumer.

    Any company that is willing to alter their products to please those consumers are likely to have better business, and gain more customers of the product. There is no assurance that removing the genetically modified ingredients will be a solution, but General Mills has also struggled over the past year, and sales of Cheerios dropped about 7 percent.

    In case anyone has yet to encounter the term, GMOs are plants or animals that have undergone a process wherein scientists alter their genes with DNA from different species of living organisms, bacteria, or viruses to get desired traits such as resistance to disease or tolerance of pesticides.

    As a business, General Mills felt that eliminating genetically modified ingredients from their product would be beneficial to the consumer. In their announcement to the public, the company said “Why change anything at all? It’s simple. We did it because we think consumers may embrace it.”

    They also went on to say in a closing statement, “So take heart Cheerios lovers! Cheerios isn’t changing. It’s still the One and Only.” Cheerios will still be the product that everyone loves, and while it has always been made from whole-grain oats that are not genetically modified, they use a small amount of corn starch in cooking, and just one gram of sugar for taste.

    As Mike Siemienas, the spokesman for General Mills, said “For other cereals, the widespread use of GM seed for corn, soy, and beet sugar make moving to non-GMO ingredients difficult, if not impossible.”

    However, the short ingredient list for Cheerios that only includes whole grain oats, corn starch, sugar, salt, tripotassium phosphate, wheat starch, and vitamins and minerals is what made it such an easy task for General Mills.

    According to Mother Jones, GMOs are present in 60 to 70 percent of foods on US supermarket shelves, and the most common products to contain GMO ingredients are corn, sugar beets, soybeans, canola, and cottonseed.

    As of recently, Cheerios will only be using corn starch that comes from non-GMO corn and the sugar is only non-GMO pure cane sugar.

    In a smart business decision, General Mills has decided to cater to the many customers who have been demanding that the public have the right to know what is in their food, and not be subjected to eat products that have been genetically modified.

    Image via Facebook

  • Cheerios Ad Featuring Interracial Couple Brings Out the Internet Racists

    Cheerios Ad Featuring Interracial Couple Brings Out the Internet Racists

    It’s 2013 and we’re still dealing with “outrage” over the depiction of an interracial couple in a Cheerios ad.

    Cheerios’ new ad, titled “Just Checking” uses the often-cited claim that the cereal is heart healthy. In the ad, a girl asks her mother if what her dad said is true. Are cheerios actually good for your heart? Her mother confirms that yes, they are. The little girl then runs off and pours a box of Cheerios on her sleeping dad’s chest. Cute. Effective. Controversial?

    You see, the mom in the commercial is white and the dad is black. Cue angry internet racists.

    Check out the ad:

    Shortly after posting, the YouTube comments filled up with racially-charged vitriol. So much so that Cheerios was forced to remove the comments and disable commenting altogether.

    AdWeek says that the comments featured “references to Nazis, ‘troglodytes’ and ‘racial genocide.’” Classy.

    You can see more of the hateful comments on reddit, where the video made it high on the r/videos subreddit.

    “Fake couple. That lady looks too white to be married to a black man. Cheerios needs to fire their casting agent. Plus….a black man in his childs life?…lol,” says one commenter.

    To be fair, there are more comments that praise the ad than ones that deride it. And reddit’s voting system has relegated the racist comments to the bottom of the thread. But this ad is just another reminder that these kind of feelings still exist – and the anonymity of the internet just makes it worse.