Pesticides found in Cheerios and Quaker products, will you still eat them?
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Anonymous
| Have any brands of cheerios (ie the Giant, TJs or Whole Foods brands) shown not to contain thr chemical? |
Anonymous
Not true |
Anonymous
Yes. Bob's red mill and whole foods 365 oatmeal are two that do not. |
Anonymous
Sorry, thought you were asking about oatmeal |
Anonymous
Looks like the 365 cheerios-like cereal is ok, too |
Anonymous
Organic farmers can use organic pesticides. Totally true. |
Anonymous
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This is in products made from imported grain, since it is not approved in the US. It's an herbicide, not an insecticide, and the purpose is to alter plant growth so the stalks don't lodge (droop/bend, which makes it harder to harvest fields, but can also promote contamination from toxins resulting from fungal growth when the stalks don't stand up straight where air can circulate.
FWIW, coming from a 4-generation farm family, when I was growing up in the 60s we grew wheat, rye, barley, and oats. Since then, wheat is still a major crop but the other grains have to a large degree been replaced by corn and soybeans. Based on current prices, you can get $250-$300 per acre growing oats, $800-$900 growing corn, $600+ growing soybeans. If you're paying $3000-$5000 an acre to buy a farm or 150/acre to rent land, even before paying for tractors, implements, trucks to haul your grain, bins to store it in, fuel, seed, and fertilizer, which crops are going to pay for your kids' braces and college tuition? Consumer demand for oats has gone up, but looks like the supplies are from elsewhere. 2021 oat production in the US was the lowest since 1866 (there was drought in 2021 but per acre yields for crops are 3x these days what they were in the 1960s). In Minnesota, where my family's farm is, 40 million acres of oats were harvested in 1954--the first year that more tractors than horses were used on American farms. In 2018, less than a million of acres of oats were harvested. The only people growing oats in my family's neighborhood raise specialty oats that go to feed racehorses. The oats with the chemical are coming from Canada, where it is legal. There's another twist here, the potential of climate change and associated weather events, since lodging is related to wind and rain, and also a warming climate affects the composition of plants, including the lignin that keeps cereal grain stalks upright. Yeah, TLDR but never hurts for people to have some awareness that the consumer product they're focused on is the result of a whole lot of other things going on--trade policy, long term and short term economic trends, climate, and the rest of it. I don't pay the extra money for organics, but the next time I buy my regular 5 lb bag of rolled oats at the natural foods store I've shopped at for 30 years, I think I'll ask where the non-organic product is coming from. |
Anonymous
| No, but I have eliminated all added sugar and have cut back drastically on refined carbs because I was diagnosed as Type 2 diabetes three months ago, so it's a moot point. |
Anonymous
Omg who tf cares?!? |
Anonymous
Oatmeal has no sugar and cheerios has very little added sugar. They both have lots of good fiber. |