Lucky Charms Cereal May Be Poisoning You?
Beware of your breakfast cereal! Lucky Charms may be poisoning people.
This article is more than 2 years old
Produced by the General Mills food company since 1964, Lucky Charms has been a staple on breakfast tables across the United States. The cereal, made of toasted oat pieces and multi-colored marshmallows bits, has a leprechaun mascot named Lucky on the box and is quite popular in commercials for the morning meal. But the brand has come under fire recently after consumers claimed to become ill after eating the popular cereal.
Since July 2021, website IWasPoisoned.com has been filled with reports from over 100 folks who say they experienced severe gastrointestinal problems after eating the General Mills product. “My son eats Lucky Charms a few times a week for breakfast,” a mother from New Jersey wrote. “He’s been having stomach problems for about four months, missing school from vomiting and diarrhea.”
While the website is based on consumer reports, it is not run by health officials. It allows anyone to report symptoms and state where they believe their health troubles originated. The posts are reviewed, but not individually investigated. According to NBC News, it is one of several crowd-sourcing sites owned by IWP Health Inc. Its mission is to use data to bring together consumers, public health, and industry leaders to keep people safer and make businesses more profitable. Now, the comments about Lucky Charms seem to have gotten the attention of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Speaking to Food Safety News last week, the FDA said they are aware of reports and is looking into the Lucky Charms matter. “The FDA takes seriously any reports of possible adulteration of a food that may also cause illnesses or injury,” a spokesperson told the publication. “Depending on the seriousness of the problem, an FDA investigator may visit the person who made the complaint, collect product samples, and initiate inspections.”
The FDA also noted that it had not received any direct reports about Lucky Charms cereal. The health authority uses its own system called the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN) and the Adverse Event Reporting Database (CAERS) to track consumer complaints, WGN-TV reports. But they assured worried people that are still taking this matter seriously as every complaint may be used during a future inspection of a company to help identify problem areas in a production plant. The complaints are also discussed with company management.
Interestingly, CAERS has only received 41 Lucky Charms-related reports since 2004 and only three in 2021, Food & Wine reports. And only one of those three was related to the complaints listed on IWasPoisoned.com. As of April 8th, there has been no official recall of the breakfast food. But General Mills spokesperson Andrea Williamson said food safety has always been the company’s top priority. “We take the consumer concerns reported via a third-party website very seriously,” she told Today Food in an email “After a thorough internal investigation, we have not found any evidence that these complaints are attributed to our products. For now, the food company encourages consumers to share any concerns directly with General Mills to ensure they can be addressed appropriately.
