To remain gluten free, Cheerios keeps its wheat at a distance

Some readers either with serious celiac disease problems themselves or in their families wrote to me with detailed concerns about General Mills’ gluten free Cheerios claims.|

Some readers either with serious celiac disease problems themselves or in their families wrote to me with detailed concerns about General Mills’ claims of gluten free Cheerios.

For some reason I started to look more carefully at a Cheerios box wondering if there might be games or coupons, like cereal boxes used to carry. Those send-in box tops were partly what sold so many boxes of cereal for decades.

Instead of advertisements or celebrity images, I found the back of the box covered with explanations, starting with a story about “Phil,” a 50-year General Mills employee whose daughter-in-law can’t have gluten. So, referring to Phil, the box says, “Since oats are naturally gluten free, the only problem was finding a way to make sure they didn’t get mixed up with anything else.”

The box writer admits that “most of the farmers who grow oats for Cheerios also grow wheat and barley, which aren’t gluten free. Sometimes those grains get mixed together in the field or on the farm, so to make Cheerios gluten free we had to separate them.” The box also says that Cheerios are “not made with genetically modified ingredients,” although an asterisk leads you to the tiny print that says (where’s my magnifying glass?) “Trace amounts of genetically modified (also known as “genetically engineered”) material may be present due to potential cross contact during manufacturing and shipping.”

Some celiacs cannot even eat oats that have grown in fields where wheat was previously grown.

General Mills doesn’t actually say they are separating growing fields, but that they “sort other grains out of our oats,” with separate photos of oats, wheat, rye and barley, as if they have sifted them apart. The box also says Cheerios are a “proud sponsor of the Celiac Disease Foundation (celiac.org).”

There is also a strong suggestion that Cheerios’ alleged removal of gluten could reunite families so that they can eat together and that “dietary restrictions get in the way spending time together,” further saying, “After all, bringing families together around the breakfast table is exactly why we’re here.”

Or is it to sell cereal?

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