Wednesday, May 20, 2009

New Peanut Flour Warnings for General Mills Cereals

I just got an alert from my local food allergy support group and wanted to pass it along.

Please check the ingredients lists of your General Mills cereals very carefully. The company is adding peanut flour to Cocoa Puffs. Some of their other cereal products contain new allergy warnings for nuts as well as for other foods including gluten.

The link above contains an exchange in the comments section of the blog between someone at General Mills and the Allergy Moms web site readers. The General Mills exec maintains that you can trust the labels on General Mills products and that they explicitly list allergy warnings wherever appropriate.

I know that Frosted Cheerios (a General Mills cereal) contain almond flour despite the fact that the name of the cereal contains no reference to nuts--we found that out just as our daughter was about to eat Frosted Cheerios at a relative's house. This was about a year ago and as I recall, there was no "called out" allergy warning. Almond flour was simply listed as an ingredient. The labels may have changed since then--I'm sure we'll all check our cereal boxes now!

We still eat the plain Cheerios without incident at my house but it just goes to show you that you must read all labels, all the time. As ingredients labels continue to evolve, I'm sure we will all be faced with new decisions about old standby foods.

5 comments:

Ruth Smith said...

Jenny-This is a great reminder for all of us. Read the labels each and every time. Even food allergic veterans forget. What once was safe may not be this time around. Recipes and manufacturing practices change.

Thanks for the great post! We don't get cocoa puffs but an alternate organic brand-but I may have picked up in the future had my brand not been available as I had cked the cocoa puffs label in the past.

Elisabeth said...

Ugh! I hate hearing about stuff like this! I am vigilant about reading labels, but fear that others are not so cautious.

All I can do is emphasize to our friends/family that they may NOT feed my son without checking with me first - every time.

Thanks for your blog. =)

Lisita said...

Jenny I'm happy to have come across your site. My daughter, MG, is also allergic to peanuts & tree nuts. Do you mind if I like your blog to mine? I hadn't heard about the cocca puffs...it really is a good reminder to always check labels. Thanks for the heads up!

Jenny said...

Hi Lisita, Please feel free to link my blog to your site. I'm glad you find it helpful! :)--Jenny

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