Despite being highly processed and not at all healthy, consumers still purchase box after box of “natural” and organic breakfast cereals thinking it’s good for them.
This is because consumers get so easily excited about a label with just one or two ingredients and no chemicals or preservatives, but rarely seem to consider how those ingredients are sourced or processed – which is many times more important!
Kashi GoLean, an extremely popular brand of “natural” cereal recently got slapped for abusing this misplaced consumer trust by The Cornucopia Institute’s Cereal Crimes report.
A box of Kashi GoLean cereal was purchased from a Whole Foods in Boston and sent to an accredited lab for testing.
The findings?
The cereal was 100% GMO and had pesticide residues despite having “natural” on the label.
Kashi responded by saying the information was inaccurate and misleading because it was not based on a formal scientific analysis of Kashi products.
Huh??
How can testing a box of Kashi cereal at an accredited lab not be scientifically accurate?
Oh wait, I know! Â It’s because Kashi wasn’t funding the testing behind the scenes so they could stealthily control the results that were reported, right?
Kashi’s arrogant and lame response is typical of giant food manufacturers like Kellogg, which owns Kashi, who are used to being able to claim just about anything they want about their products and get away with it.
Even more lame, when it became apparent that Kashi wasn’t going to be able to spin its way out of the PR nightmare, it was announced that Kashi would be 100% GMO free by …
2015!
Don’t worry guys. Â Keep on eating that GMO, pesticide laced cereal for just a few more years and we’ll be sure to get our act together and get rid of them before you’re in a wheelchair! Â And, if we’re lucky, you will forget all about this messy public relations snafu in a few short months so we won’t really have to change at all!
The fact is, Kellogg supports GMOs for use in “natural” products. According to the grassroots organization GMO Free USA, Kellogg is actively working against requiring the labeling of GMOs having contributed $33,000 so far to propaganda campaigns to defeat it.
Best not to trust food companies with your most important meal of the day and go barcode free with your breakfast choices. Â The soaked cereals of traditional cultures are an excellent choice or, if you really need a cold breakfast cereal, make a truly healthy one yourself so that it doesn’t contain the extruded, denatured, allergenic cereal grains of the heavily processed, boxed variety that are falsely promoted on the label as somehow healthy because they are natural or organic.
Sarah, The Healthy Home Economist
I love when people complain about any prepared foods they eat. When will you people wake up and realize that you can’t trust any food that you don’t prepare yourself. People are sheep and will believe anything… diet of the week.. vegetarianism is good for the body.. vegans rule.. etc..
Make your own food. Eat sensibly. The end.
Thank you for the useful information, but please don’t use “lame” as a perjorative adjective. It’s offensive (which I know you did not mean.)
Really Melinda? Sarah just provided us with some very beneficial information and this is your complaint? This isn’t your blog so Sarah can use whatever PEJORATIVE adjectives she would like to use… The fact that you can’t spell PEJORATIVE is offensive.
I uncharacteristically bought some of their bars because of an in-store coupon. The fact is, they tasted like such junk there is no way I would ever buy them again. I was kind of like, “Oh good, these are horrible, I had a feeling they were a wolf in sheep’s clothing.”
Oh no. I have been eating it for years thinking it was healthy. What cereal is healthy?
Organic and “natural” are not one and the same. Its rather disappointing that so many consumers are not aware of this fact.
Never been a big fan of dry cereal. However, while it hasn’t been for a few years, I used to eat the Kashi hot cereal. At the time, I thought the hot cereal was pretty good. I’m glad I have had the hot cereal for several years if the grains they use are “crap.”
How disappointing. I love(d) Kashi and felt like I was doing the right thing by including it in my morning meal. I think I’ll just stay away from cereal except oatmeal. But how do I know that my oats aren’t GMO? What the heck am I going to feed my kids in the morning!
Sadly, the only way to know they’re not GMO is if they’re organic.
As for your kids, they’d be getting far more nutrition from a couple of eggs fried in real butter and a cup of yogurt or homemade kefir with some berries on top.
we had tried one box awhile ago, found out who owns it and whoa….no more
Thanks for sharing this, I had no idea!!!
Dry cereal is a modern product that has always been of questionable value. But Kashi really looks bad here. GMOS and pesticides are not, by any stretch of the imagination, healthy.
Thank you, Sarah, for exposing this travesty. A good reminder to NEVER believe marketing.
I will stick to nitrate free bacon and pastured eggs, an occasional grassfed breakfast steak, and sprouted toast smothered in pastured butter.