General Mills To Drop Artificial Ingredients In Cereal

schwit1 writes: General Mills announced Monday that it will be removing artificial colors and flavoring from its cereal products over the next two to three years. The company said that Trix and Reese's Puffs will be some of the first cereals to undergo the changes adding that cereals like Lucky Charms that have marshmallows may take longer to reformulate. They say 90 percent of their cereals will have no artificial ingredients by the end of 2016. "We've continued to listen to consumers who want to see more recognizable and familiar ingredients on the labels and challenged ourselves to remove barriers that prevent adults and children from enjoying our cereals," said Jim Murphy, president of General Mills cereal division, in a statement.

Comments

What are natural flavors, really?

[Dorianny]

There is absolutely no difference between a flavor-ant that has been isolated and extracted (with chemical processes and solvents in most cases) starting with a natural source and the same chemical that has been produced with a chemical process starting with purified raw ingredients.

before the 'bad science' complaints

[fermion]

This change has nothing to do with health or whether one additive is more deadly than another additive. For all we know the new formulations are going to be more deadly to humans. I can't imagine that Trix can said to actually nutritional for any human person, although Trix Yogurt used to be one of the less offensive brands of yogurt like food stuff. This change has to do with market differentiation and convincing parents to pay a premium for name brand product that kids will eat. Now, if we are talking nutrition, I would say a mug of steel cut oatmeal with raisins is a good minimally processed food, that is cheap and nutritional to boot. But this was not my breakfast a little tyke because no one made me breakfast. There was dry cereal and a cup of milk and it was up to be to put it together. I ate corn chex mostly, which still has one of the shortest ingredient labels in the business, and BHT is the only thing that is suspect.

This is interesting

[Gordo_1]

There's this huge movement against GMOs, artificial ingredients and other scapegoat ingredients du jour, despite the fact that virtually all of them have undergone rigorous testing and long-term studies and have proven to be safe for human consumption in reasonable quantities. But I guess if it spooks consumers, companies are going to do what's necessary to maintain their revenue streams. Never mind that a diet high in simple carbs like sugar and HFCS (which are highly and conspicuously represented in General Mills products) are the real enemies that shorten your life and bring on obesity and all its nasty side effects like cancer, heart disease and diabetes. Then again, I guess it's better to simply green wash them as "organic evaporated cane juice" and the like than to risk making things less palatable?

Re:Artificial?

[reboot246]

HFCS is the worst offender, but even simple fructose is bad. It goes straight to the liver. You should keep your intake of the stuff to the barest minimum you can. It's as bad as alcohol for your body, and you don't even get the benefit of a buzz. Just lay off the fructose and your liver will thank you.

Stick to dextrose (glucose) for your sweetener. It's much easier to digest. Just don't go overboard with it.

True to an extent

[aepervius]

To some extent true, but there is load of artificial coloring which do not exist naturally. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... is only existing because we made it, and is not existing in insect specie or anything. Heck Some artificial coloring may induce hyperactive behavior in children. http://www.webmd.com/add-adhd/... and http://www.scientificamerican....

Assuredly evidence might not be enough to forbid the ingredients, but it is enough to warrant caution and maybe remove it from children's food. Personally I do not know the research good enough to tell. Anyway, definitively not natural. But the natural fallacy (which you might have wanted to mention) never took hold for me. Pure natural arsenic or botulism toxin is poison, artificial non naturally existing recent antibiotic, preservative additive are helpful. It is not about the natural or artificial provenance that people should look to, but the effects. But then again that's why it is called a fallacy.

They are not "equally bad".

[denzacar]

Sugar (sucrose) feeds you equal amounts of glucose and fructose.
HFCS used in sodas is 55% fructose and 41% glucose.

Human body has built-in sensors for high glucose. Our blood sugar goes up, we feel energized, we stop being hungry.

Human body has NO sensors for fructose. You can eat or drink it all day and never feel you had enough.
That's cause fructose in nature comes in the form of fruit. With all that fiber you have to gobble down and then carry around in your gut till the fructose gets extracted.
And that would trip a bunch of other sensors telling us to stop eating.

So, when we take sucrose which is exactly half glucose half fructose, the moment we hit satiety for glucose that also trips our "I'm full" sensor and we stop eating.
At which point we have ingested an equal amount of both ready to burn glucose and ready to be turned into fat and burned later fructose.

HFCS 55 on the other hand only has about 80% of glucose that sucrose has. And no fiber to trip the "fructose-comes-with-a-lot-of-fiber" sensor.
So, to reach glucose satiety and trip the "I'm full" sensor drinking HFCS 55, we will have to intake about 1.25 times more sweetener then with sucrose.
But HFCS 55 has 110% of the amount of the fructose contained in sugar (sucrose).

Meaning that to reach the same glucose satiety level which would trip that "I'm full" senor, we ingest 1.25 more sweetener which contains 1.1 times more of the chemical we use solely for production of fat.
Unless we're hiking dozens of miles daily, in snow, up hill, both ways.
Cause we evolved to store that fructose which grows in warm weather for the long winter months when there is no food growing on trees.
And we don't start burning it until we burn all our glucose in our bloodstream.

1.25 times 1.1 equals 1.375 times more fructose (i.e. future fat) ingested when drinking HFCS 55 sweetened soda, compared to drinking the same soda sweetened with sucrose.