GMO-Riddled ‘Lucky Charms’ Makes it to UK Supermarket, Parents Outraged
In the U.S., we tend to live in a bit of a bubble, accepting everything we are exposed to on a daily basis as normalcy. We forget it isn’t the same in other countries around the world. Case in point: Lucky Charms, an artificially-colored, GMO-riddled cereal popular in the U.S., recently made its way to U.K. store shelves, and parents are outraged.
Lucky Charms, made by GM, is a common breakfast cereal here in the U.S. I imagine many older individuals reading this now thought its blue moons, yellow diamonds, and green clovers were the best thing that ever happened to breakfast growing up. Older and wiser, however, many of us won’t let our children touch the product. Still, Lucky Charms remains one of the top-selling cereals on the market, and it has recently debuted overseas to a less-than-thrilled market.
“Imported Lucky Charms can have adverse effects on children’s behavior,” said an article originally printed in Britain’s Daily Mail. “It is marketed as nutritious, but contains four suspect colourings,” they warn.
The cereal recently showed up on shelves of Tesco grocery stores, a chain of stores that bans genetically modified ingredients in their own store-brand, but obviously has no problems selling genetically modified imports from the country who does GMOs best.
Is food coloring bad for you? In the U.S., a very small percentage of parents are aware of the harmful effects of artificial food colorings or the potentially cancer-causing effects of genetically modified grains. Some, even with that knowledge, will still cave and buy their children the sugary, nutritionally devoid breakfast. But in a country where the awareness is at least slightly higher, where warning labels are required on foods with artificial colors, there is outrage over Lucky Charms even being on the shelves.
One father, a psychotherapist from southwest London, buckled and bought Lucky Charms for his 9-year old son. Hyperaware of what this new food might do to his son, the father described him as “very giddy” after eating the cereal.
“As his behaviour became more and more unusually hyper and lacking attention I then noticed that he was enthusiastically eating and talking about this new cereal called Lucky Charms,” said Mr Stevenson. “I checked the box and found out that in very small lettering it said that it was a GM food. I destroyed the packet and he calmed down the next day but I was very concerned and angry”.
Top 10 Children’s Cereals with Sugar
Seeing how parents “across the pond” react to one of the most popular U.S. breakfast cereals truly puts things in perspective. While parents are angry at Tesco and their decision to sell these cereals, we simply accept them as normal and rarely give it more than a fleeting thought.
We can hope this outrage will translate to concrete action on the part of Tesco, perhaps pulling Lucky Charms from their shelves for the sake of British children and their concerned parents. One has to wonder, what would happen if every consumer in the U.S. decided to get “concerned and angry” about the state of our food system.
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Europe is pretty progressive on foods and chemicals. Another example from an observant parent.
GM is the manufacturer and not proof that the cereal contains gmos. GM stands for General Mills. Of course, dyes in food are bad for us, but there is really no way to know if Lucky Charms contain gmos as they do not have to be labelled as such in the U.S.
But they are labelled as such here in the United Kingdom. I have done what I am about to describe to you within the past month. I noticed there was a whole shelf of imported American products. I looked on the nutritional guides on the boxes and in addition to the regular American label they also included a second label to bring themselves up to standard for the UK standards in comparison to the lax guidelines in America.
GM is the company name but on the labels from a product imported from America also includes a secondary label that states *Contains Genetically Modified Material* There is a problem when you consider that the vast majority of the food in America is now contaminated with GMO’s.
And they are delicious!
I will not feed the trolls.
I am sorry I didn’t see this sooner. As soon as we think we are gaining ground on exposing just how dangerous gmos are, then another U.S. government agency looks the other way and lets Monsanto do whatever they want. If there is a devil, he is among us, alive in well and spreading poison in the U.S. and all over the world!!!
Not just the Lucky Charms either. They have a whole section of imported american foods at my local tesco and every single one of the contained GMO material. I was looked at as if i had a screw loose when I mentioned the problems associated with the consumption of GMO’s.
People should probably assume that GM has been sneaking many GMO products past a lot of different markets globally. Starving people don’t turn down free food. It’ll taste good initially and poison them later.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21338670
http://responsibletechnology.org/10-Reasons-to-Avoid-GMOs
Wow! So glad at least they are requiring labeling in the UK!!!
Never liked that crap. Give me scrambled eggs with toast or oatmeal ANY day!
ummmm, GM food means General Mills NOT GMO. Ignorance is bliss…and a great marketing tool
Tesco’s. Well, what a surprise. Easiest thing to do is to DEMAND a precise report about this cereal and get to the bottom of it. If it’s not actually GM food and the manufacturer GM is being confused with it, then somebody needs to sort it. In the meantime, it should be boycotted.
i just ate two bowls reading this, reading the box say it got 3 effining rainbows like two were not enough, how many rainbows you got? haters. Its always the irish to blame eh? Well I like like this new and improved illumanati taste laddys will be having more of it so get used to it. doesnt say gmo anywhere on this box, if talking about sugar and food coloring you might be say the air you breathe is bad so who farging cares eat it and enjoy you people dont have to be aholes all the time.