What is General Mills protecting us from with GMO-free Cheerios?
To start with, there are no genetically modified oats grown anywhere, at least not in the current sense of the term, which refers to the splicing of specific foreign genes into the DNA of a seed.
As is the case with any commercial cereal, Cheerios contains a number of ingredients, with nutritious whole-grain oats at the top of the list. Next come modified corn starch and sugar. It is to these two ingredients that General Mills refers when it talks about “GMO-free.” Much of the corn and some of the sugar beets grown in North America are genetically modified to resist herbicides and ward off insects. But by the time the highly processed starch and sugar extracted from these plants reach the food supply, they retain no vestige of any genetic modification. There is no way to distinguish the starch or sugar derived from genetically modified plants from the conventional varieties.
Make no mistake about it: General Mills’s introduction of Cheerios sporting the label “Not made with genetically modified ingredients” is a mere marketing ploy and has nothing to do with health or nutrition.
Read the full, original article: Joe Schwarcz: There’s a big hole in Cheerios’ boast
