I last wrote about Cheerios in the fall of 2015, after General Mills decided to voluntarily recall 1.8 million boxes of Gluten-Free Cheerios.
That article was originally published on a now defunct gluten-free blog. Since Cheerios was no longer a hot topic when I gave those older posts a new home, I didn't republish it.
A few years ago the Canadian Celiac Association (CCA), the organization that certifies gluten-free products up to 5 ppm, announced that they do not recommend that those who have celiac disease or non-celiac gluten sensitivity consume these gluten-free labeled Cheerios.
Apparently, General Mills was able to bulldoze their way into Canada, somehow, and marketed 5 of their Cheerios flavors as gluten free, the same flavors that are available here.
Today, October 16, 2020, there are dozens of flavors all marked gluten free in the top right corner of the box.
Oddly, the cereal giant is not just introducing Gluten-Free Cheerios to a small geographical area, to see if Canadians react to the mechanical sorted oats like a large percentage of the celiac population does here. Instead, they are rolling it out all over the country.
Like Gluten-Free Watchdog and other concerned individuals and organizations here in the U.S., the Canadian Celiac Association initiated a conference call on August 2, 2016, to discuss their concerns with both General Mills Canada and General Mills US.
The results of that conference call brought the following recommendation:
“The Canadian Celiac Association (CCA) recommends that people with celiac disease or gluten sensitivity DO NOT consume the gluten-free labeled Cheerios products at this time because of concerns about the potential levels of gluten in boxes of these cereals. The CCA is receptive to evaluating any additional information that General Mills is willing to disclose.”
Why Does a Canadian Recommendation Matter to U.S. Celiacs?
The reason this has brought a welcomed surprise to many celiac advocates here in the U.S. is because the Celiac Disease Foundation (CDF) used to have their logo plastered on all boxes of Gluten-Free Cheerios, when General Mills first rolled them out; even after large amounts of people within the gluten-free community started reacting adversely to the product.
Apparently, the CDF doesn't CARE how General Mills processes and tests the cereal because they were openly supporting it by their logo being on the box.
I've been suspecting for awhile now, and Gluten Dude confirmed it a few years back, that General Mills and their subsidiaries are the CDF's major gold sponsors of that organization.
While the site boldly states that “under no circumstances will CDF's acceptance of any Sponsorship be considered an endorsement of the product(s) or service(s) advertised,” how do they explain their logo finding its way onto every Gluten-Free Cheerios box if they are not endorsing the product?
It took me about half an hour to find the information Gluten Dude talked about in this blog post. Oddly, I wasn't able to access it from the site. I had to do several Google searches before I landed on the correct page.
According to the CDF themselves:
- General Mills
- General Mills Chex Cereals
- General Mills Cheerios
- General Mills Lucky Charms
- Betty Crocker Gluten-Free Mixes
- Betty Crocker Gluten-Free Bisquick
- Pillsbury
- Nature Valley
- Progresso
are their 9 top “Leadership” sponsors, and ALL of these companies are owned by General Mills.
There are NO other companies that are assigned to that sponsorship designation. In other words, the CDF gets more money from General Mills than from any other company sponsor.
- President's Choice
- Schar
- Only Oats
President's Choice is a store brand that is owned by Loblaw Companies Limited, Canada's largest food retailer, but it has also found its way onto U.S. grocery store shelves since the '80s. RC Cola, for example, was a direct product of that company, and the Great Value brand at Walmart is simply President's Choice renamed.
Schar is Europe's leading gluten-free retailer. While they did introduce gluten-removed wheat starch into their croissants, the croissants are not sold here in the U.S., as far as I know.
Only Oats is owned by Aveno Foods, a company that sells purity-protocol gluten-free oats and gluten-free oat products like oat flour, oat bran, and various mixes for muffins, cookies, and pancakes. They are available only in Canada.
Their silver sponsor, which means they contribute less money than the gold sponsors do, is Glutenpro, a Canadian-based company that offers innovative solutions for those who suffer with celiac disease or non-celiac gluten sensitivity.
Products include a dietary supplement and EZ Gluten home testing strips, which many super-sensitive celiacs find invaluable. This company also offers genetic testing.
If you take a closer look at the aims of the Celiac Disease Foundation, here in the U.S., it claims that they are interested in the diagnosis and treatment of gluten-related disorders, along with finding a cure for celiac disease.
To achieve these aims, they use advocacy, education, and research that is supposed to improve the quality of life for those affected by gluten-related disorders.
But how can that be?
Articles on the site claim that “if a product is labeled gluten free, it is safe for someone with celiac disease.”
And their Gluten-Free 101 article recommends that beginners “only eat products containing oats if they are labeled gluten free.”
The claim that anything labeled gluten free is safe for all celiacs leads into the idea they present about gluten-free oats. Their oat recommendation doesn't talk about sticking to gluten-free certified oats that have been grown, transported, and processed under a strict gluten-free protocol.
Instead, the advice the CDF is giving out is simply to make sure that “gluten free” is on the package of oats or any oat products before you buy them.
That is a direct statement pointing at Gluten-Free Cheerios being safe for all celiacs, even those new to a gluten-free diet.
In the past, celiac experts have always recommended that you do not add gluten-free oats to your diet until after your intestines have had a lengthy time to heal. And even then, they must be oats grown and processed under a gluten-free protocol.
What the Canadians are saying about Gluten-Free Cheerios is very important because the celiac advocates, organizations, and even researchers here in the U.S. are giving out inaccurate and harmful advice due to their association with General Mills.
Luckily, the Canadian Celiac Association is not for sale.
Their advice, guidance, and recommendations are still sensible and realistic. Yes, they take extra precautions, but that is the only way to keep all celiacs safe.
What Happened when Gluten-Free Cheerios First Hit the Shelves?
Many in the celiac disease community were shocked and outraged when people with gluten-related disorders began getting sick shortly after Cheerios first hit the shelves.
I'm not really sure why.
Given the company's:
- inadequate testing methods
- robotic double-speak
- lack of transparency
- outrageous lies
- arrogance
- need to blame the celiac
What did people with celiac disease and non-celiac gluten sensitivity expect to happen when they ate something that General Mills made out of non-certified gluten-free oats?
Even more mind-blowing was the strange reaction of those who were defending General Mills and calling their actions "proactive" and "upfront."
I couldn't relate to that.
At that time, the company only admitted to the wheat contamination that the FDA found when they investigated reports coming in from the celiac community about strong adverse reactions to Gluten-Free Cheerios.
The company blamed, and continues to blame, all reactions on oats instead of their sorting and testing protocol.
There is nothing upfront about that.
Are Cheerios Gluten Free or Not?
The FDA gluten-free labeling law establishes the definition for gluten-free foods as anything that contains less than 20 ppm of gluten. The 20 ppm of gluten often quoted is the same as 20 milligrams of gluten in slightly more than 35 ounces of food.
To put that into a realistic context, if you ate the 6 servings of grains that the U.S. dietary guidelines suggest, at 20 ppm, you would only consume about 3-1/2 milligrams of gluten. However, grains are not the only place where low gluten residues hide.
Almost all of the products on the market today contain trace amounts of gluten, even those certified by the Canadian Celiac Association, which is why the reaction of the celiac disease community to Gluten-Free Cheerios was more than surprising.
This whole mess isn't news.
Cheerios was never gluten free to begin with.
Legal Definition for Gluten Free Helps Big Business
Major manufacturers here in U.S. need a wide tolerance margin to make gluten-free product creation viable, due to the fact that most of the businesses wanting to get into the gluten-free market share need to be able to process products in a non-dedicated facility and/or on shared equipment.
At 20 ppm, manufacturers could also add gluten-removed ingredients, such as wheat starch, provided the finished product fell within the legal parameters. Cheerios does not contain wheat starch any more. Wheat starch was removed from Cheerios several years ago, but the new Gluten-Free Cheerios do use regular oats ground into oat flour in gluten-free facilities.
Gluten-Free Cheerios are not made with certified gluten-free oats.
That's the point!
General Mills claims that they can't find enough certified oats to make it viable.
Their current oat processing involves sifting out gluten grains like wheat and barley kernels before shipping the cleaned oats to a mill. The oat flour supposedly fits within the legal definition for gluten free.
Why Gluten-Free Cheerios are NOT Gluten Free
Oats are commonly grown in the exact same fields as wheat, barley, and rye, by rotation. Even if the plot isn't rotated, the oats can be contaminated by gluten grains blown into the field by the wind.
This is why some people also react to beans, lentils, corn, and other whole grains. Rotating grain crops is a common practice.
Wheat, barley, and rye can accidentally get mixed in with the oat groats during harvesting, especially since oats are harvested with the exact same equipment that is used to harvest gluten grains.
The contaminated oats are then stored in common bins where wheat, barley, and rye have been stored before. Trucks used to transport the oats to processing plants are also common trucks used for hauling other gluten grains.
If the processing plant isn't a dedicated gluten-free facility, there are even more areas for cross contamination to occur.
Obviously, the sorting factory General Mills uses to sift the gluten grains out of the oats is not a gluten-free facility. That would be impossible, since just bringing contaminated oats into a building contaminates it to a certain degree.
The cleaned oats are transferred to a gluten-free dedicated facility, where the oats are then ground into flour. The other odd occurrence here is that some of the cleaned oats are transferred to the mill by conveyor belt between the non-gluten-free facility and the gluten-free mill.
General Mills will not disclose how they are keeping that belt free of gluten.
After being milled, the oat flour is then transported to the Cheerios facility, which is done by railway cars. If they have more flour than what they can transport by rail, gluten-free dedicated trucks are also used, or so they said.
The Cheerios section of the facility is supposed to be segregated from the rest of the building, but past events have now made that idea suspect.
How General Mills Tests Cheerios for Gluten
Although General Mills won't release the specific data, they have shared how they go about testing the product. It's called "mean" testing, and it is done by lot.
They do not test individual boxes of cereal.
Instead, they gather up several boxes from one day's production, grind the Cheerios back into a powder, mix all of that powder from the different boxes together, and then run one single test on it collectively.
In other words, General Mills is taking an average of 6 to 12 boxes of cereal processed on any given day.
Scientifically, mean testing is worthless and unsafe, especially for celiacs who are asymptomatic. For that reason, eating Cheerios is similar to playing Russian Roulette.
While one box or portion of a box might fit within the parameters of FDA regulations, other boxes or portions of the same box might not. This type of testing becomes particularly problematic once the FDA gets involved because the inconsistencies in testing benefits General Mills.
Unless the FDA tests the actual cereal that a celiac ate and reacted to, the chances are high that the tests won't catch the boxes that are actually contaminated with gluten. This is exactly why "mean" testing is being used.
It provides a wide margin of damage control.
General Mills representatives are still skirting around the issues of segregated machinery and won't address the specific steps they take to keep the equipment free from contamination. Many guess nothing is being done, and that nothing will be done about the current cross-contamination problem.
As more and more reports of glutenings keep pouring in from the celiac community, General Mills spokesmen continue to play stupid.
Our Experience with Gluten-Free Cheerios
Since I don't eat oats right now, I can only share hubby's experience. He has dermatitis herpetiformis and only suffers gastrointestinal distress when he has been chronically glutened, so he wanted to give Gluten-Free Cheerios a try.
He only ate a bowl or two of cereal on the weekends for a snack. At that rate, his reaction took a few weeks to show up. The box we purchased from Walmart didn't come from the Lodi facility, but hubby has definitely reacted to it anyway.
His scalp was covered in hundreds of tiny, bleeding sores, and he also broke out on his backside.
Once he made the connection between his dermatitis herpetiformis outbreak and the Cheerios, I read him the apology that General Mills put out, without voicing my opinion either way.
When I was finished, he simply said:
"They cannot be trusted anymore. I've been getting those sores again lately. I'm done with them."
He then got up and threw the box of cereal in the trash and took the trash bag right out to the curb.
What Puzzles Me Most
What puzzles me most about this whole mess is why celiacs are so anxious to keep eating a cereal that is known to make other celiacs sick. I've seen many use the exact same arguments that General Mills is using.
While I realize that each of us has different levels of sensitivity to gluten, and time is on the side of the manufacturer before the truth comes out at your annual blood tests, maybe someone can explain to me why eating processed foods, or even going out to eat, is so important that most of you are willing to gamble with your life.
Frankly, I just don't get it.
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