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Cheerios - A drug? It is, according to the FDA
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by Zachary Gauld | May 13, 2009 at 08:04 am
420 views | 48 Recommendations | 7 comments
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The Food and Drug Administration scolded the makers of Cheerios about the way they promote the cereal's health benefits. The FDA sent a letter of warning to General Mills accusing them of making unauthorized health claims.
According to a letter from the FDA General Mills' advertising violates the federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act. The agency said claims that Cheerios ingredients can lower cholesterol within a certain amount of time, all while providing cancer-fighting and heart-healthy benefits, essentially makes Cheerios "a drug" by their definition. And no drug in this country can be legally marketed without an approved new drug application.
In a statement issued Tuesday, General Mills said this dispute is over language, not science. The company pointed out that the FDA'a complaint doesn't actually question whether Cheerios can help lower cholesterol levels -- it only talks about how the health benefits are advertised.
Seriously? Are we going to consider oatmeal a drug too? If I remember correctly Quaker Oats advertises that it helps lower cholesterol too, right on the container it comes in. We are seriously becoming a nanny state.
So where is the FDA with PepsiCo and their Quaker Oats on this matter? Or is PepsiCo just lobbying the government to ignore them?
This is just absurd.
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Most RecentMost Recommended Comments (7)
at 08:38 on May 13th, 2009
Well said.
at 08:49 on May 13th, 2009
Much adieu about nothing! Do they not have better things to do?
at 11:56 on May 13th, 2009
Essentially, the FDA has limited Freedom of Speech for decades.
This health claim is legitimate and derived from research that everyone in the know has heard for years.
Not allowing General Mills to state something true about its product because such as statement recreates the category to which Cheerios belongs from food to drug is bureaucratic evil mindedness that keeps us down as a people and subordinate to corporations who get their protection from the FDA.
Durk Pearson won a case against the FDA on folic acid.
There is abundant proof that folic acid prevents birth defects, and the work was done with folic acid pills, naturally, because that way you knew exactly what the women were taking.
The folic acid pill manufacturers wanted to use that proven result to tout the value of taking their supplements and the FDA claimed the opposite in this case, that folic acid used was a food, and that that was a drug claim.
So Pearson went ahead and helped beat them in an administrative court. The FDA had to allow the health claim, but, in this case one similar about cod liver oil, the FDA still wouldn't yield, and so Pearson had to go back and fight them once again and win once again.
Then there was a similar case about the heart-protective effects of cod liver oil. The FDA lost there, too.
The next nightmare is the Codex Alimentarius.
Under the Codex, it will be next to impossible to buy the vitamin supplements the way I do today. This one is real fascism by bureaucracy.
at 12:08 on May 13th, 2009
Very well said.
at 12:13 on May 13th, 2009
So, can you get pulled over for DAB (Driving After Breakfast)?
at 12:35 on May 13th, 2009
I don't think it has reached that point yet, haha.
at 18:56 on May 13th, 2009
I heard some guy at work got fired from a random Cherrio Test. They said he was 2.5 bows over the legal limit.
lmao