A quick note today on a story covered at the end of NPR’s morning edition: General Mills is apparently feeling the strain of rising corn prices as a result of the ethanol buzz. They reported that General Mill’s recent posted profits did not come without some fancy product shuffling. Not only did they reduce discounts and up the price to consumers on products like Cheerios, they also dropped the size of each box! Did anybody notice the change? No.

General Mill’s 2007 annual report lists nearly $2 billion in sales for ‘Big G’ cereals alone. at $3 a box that’s 651 million boxes of Cheerios. How wanton are we as a society in respect to our food security when we don’t notice a change in volume of a product we buy so frequently, even with the price going up as well? If they can change the volume without us knowing, what about the ingredients? Ever see those labels that say “one or more of the following ingredients”?

General Mills makes a lot more than Cheerios, and you might be surprised by some of the brands. To name a few: Yoplait Yogurt, Progresso Soups, Old El Paso, Bettry Crocker, Haagen Daz, Pillsbury, Nature’s Valley, and even Cascade Farms Organic and Muir Glenn Organic soups and sauces.

My question is, with the Big G representing such a huge slice of the food base in America, as well as Canada and Europe, should we be complacent that our food can be so invisibly manipulated in both quantity and content? Should there be no oversight? And don’t say the FDA does it already.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 20th, 2007 at 9:32 am by Philip Loring and is filed under Food. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.