General Mills To Eliminate Artificial Colors and Flavors From All Cereals
June 23, 2015 | Posted in
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ABC
Action News has just reported General Mills’ groundbreaking
announcement that they are voluntarily removing harmful food dyes and
artificial flavors
from their entire cereal line – even Trix and Lucky Charms.
This
is not to say that the brightly colored breakfast grains will become
lackluster – it’s always been possible to naturally color food. There
was never
any need to subject consumers to
15 million pounds of carcinogenic
petroleum byproducts (coal tar derivatives) per year.
The company is the first major cereal company to replace those artificial ingredients with fruits, vegetables and spices.
“We
wanted to make sure they were still fun vibrant colors that we are
providing and the fruity flavor that kids expect,” Kate Gallager,
General Mills
cereal developer, told Good Morning America.
Gallager
provided an exclusive look at General Mills’ top secret cereal lab
where they tried hundreds of natural ingredients like tomatoes, purple
carrots and spices like turmeric for colors.
By
this coming January, the company said 75 percent of its cereals will be
without those artificial ingredients, likely including Trix and Reese’s
Puffs; and by the end of 2016, the company hopes to cover 90 percent of
the cereal brands.
General
Mills says Lucky Charms’ marshmallows will prove to be the most
difficult and might not become naturally colored until 2017. GM said
they were
making changes for health reasons and that over 60 percent of their
cereals either were already free of dyes or have made the transition.
The
FDA still holds that artificial colors are not harmful to the nervous
system of children and do not lead to hyperactivity. The European Union
disagrees
– prior to banning them, they made sure ingredients displayed warnings
to parents. Even if the FDA will stalwartly defend the unnecessary
ingredients, there is ample proof of artificial colors linked to
ADHD, allergies and cancer. The FDA should recall (no pun intended)
that the artificial colors approved as safe in previous decades had to
be pulled from the market for the dangerous harmful health effects.
Artificial
flavors are synthetic, mainly chemically derived additives that fall
under a broad spectrum of ingredients. Some individuals are sensitive
to certain artificial ingredients but may have to avoid all products
that contain artificial flavorings since the labels are non-specific. If
the body does not recognize the components, such chemical flavorings
can take up receptor sites and place heavier
burdens on the liver and pancreas which need to need to exhaust more
enzymes to break them down.
In
recent years, GM eliminated most GMOs from most of their Cheerios line
because of consumer demand. Whenever a giant food company makes great
strides
to please consumers, it never hurts to thank them.
Heather Callaghan is a natural health blogger and food
freedom activist. You can see her work at
NaturalBlaze.com and ActivistPost.com. Like at
Facebook.
This article can be republished from this site in part or in full, leaving all links intact, giving full attribution including bio, under Creative Commons license.
This article can be republished from this site in part or in full, leaving all links intact, giving full attribution including bio, under Creative Commons license.
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