Healthify your supermarket choices.
Cereal Lovers Betrayed by Cascadian Farm? [Inside the Label]
Are you a loyal fan of a specific cereal brand? Is it the flavor? The nutritional value you once took the time to look up? The only thing your kids will eat? Well here’s some bad news. Manufacturers can, and often do, change product formulations, and you don’t even know about it. Sometimes the changes are not necessarily in the consumers best interest.
Thanks to Marion Nestle’s Food Politics blog for pointing out a falling out between loyal customers and Cascadian Farms, an organic food manufacturer that was acquired by General Mills in 1999. (To be precise, it was actually acquired by Small Planet Foods earlier in the 1990’s. General Mills acquired Small Planet in 1999)
The issue at hand – Cascadian Farm Purely O’s Cereal and a recent reformulation that TRIPLED the sugar count without notifying consumers. The company’s website is abuzz with rants by (ex)-loyal customers:
As a mother of three, and devoted Cascadian Farm consumer, I can’t imagine why more sugar was added to previously excellent product. We consumed about 2,3 boxes of Purely O’s per week until my children all the sudden told med how they tasted differently. Naively, I thought it would be marked on the box if any changes of the products had taken place…then I noticed the increased sugar content. This made us lose faith in your entire brand.
OR
How you can call this cereal “Purely O’s” is beyond me. SUGAR!!??? Really???? CORN?? Really?? Why do we need another corn based,sugary cereal in the grocery aisles? And it is very sneaky to not announce a change on the box.
What you need to know:
In the past, Purely O’s had a front of pack label claiming “No added sugar”. This label disappeared a while ago. Then in October, the company changed its product formulation, without informing consumers.
To be fair, the increase in sugar is from 1 gram to 3 gram, which still leaves these O’s a better choice than virtually all other sweetened cereals.
The company lowered the sodium content from 280 to 200mg, which is commendable, but still too high for a breakfast cereal.
Other changes include removing whole grain barley flour and instead using corn meal. To compensate for the fiber loss, they’ve added oat fiber. The total fiber count hasn’t changed and is 3 grams per serving, the minimum you should be getting from a breakfast cereal.
So why hide the change? It’s not like people won’t notice – the ingredient list and nutrition panel are on the box, for crying out loud. Why the need for all this sneakiness? Didn’t General Mills know it would lose its loyal base of Cascadian Farms fans? Most likely, a focus group showed that the loss of a few loyal fans would be compensated for by an influx of new consumers for whom 3 grams of sugar is a 60-70% reduction.
We’ve updated the CerealScan database to reflect these changes. Cascadian Farm Purely O’s is still a top scorer, but for a group of (no longer) loyal customers, that doesn’t matter anymore.
What to do at the supermarket:
When buying a breakfast cereal, look for low sugar (6 or less grams. 3 grams is considered very low), high fiber (3 or more grams), and less than 150mg sodium per serving. Obviously, artificial colors are a big No No. These factors are much more important factors for your heath than whether the cereal is organic or not.
And just to reiterate, despite the changes, Purely O’s are still a better choice than most other cereals out there.
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sorry, i do not agree withe the concept of breakfast cereals.. there are a quick and simplistic way to afford cheap energy. children sent off to school with nothing but a bowl of cereal under their belt are being shortchanged.. eggs, bacon, sausage.. REAL food for breakfast, not a quick fix.
proves that “organic” doesn’t always equal “healthy”.
My eagle-eye wife caught the ingredient change on the purely-O’s box (now three forms of sugar instead of none!) Which is pretty impressive on my wife’s part since NOTHING else on the box changed except the copyright date (and the ingredient list). We bought (past tense) purely-O’s for our (now 4 year old) son as we were trying to bring him up not so dependent on sugar. We returned the the offending boxes, even the opened one in hopes to impress upon the retailer as to the offensiveness of Cascadian Farm’s hypocrisy. We started lurking at grocery stores all over the county and buying every box we could find with the 2008 copyright. Tragically our stash has now come to an end, we’ve open the last box of of real purely O’s. Anybody have any suggestions or know of a stash of the real stuff? I’d be great if I could find a supplier in Akron, OH area, but I’d be willing to buy a case of it if you could prove that it’s sugar free.
If anybody finds original recipe purely-O’s, or an adequate alternative, please email me at cereal@nomademail.com
Thanks,
Bill
I am so disappointed in Cascadian Farms or, as I’ve heard, now General Mills
I have emailed them to voice my own concern and got a response that ended with this:
“In keeping with our satisfaction guarantee, we would like to send you an adjustment for your purchase and it will be mailed to the address you have provided. Please allow 10-14 business days to arrive.
We appreciate your loyalty to General Mills and hope you continue to choose our products.
Sincerely,
Imee B. Roberts
Consumer Services”
Guess what I got? Coupons for Cascadian Farms products! ARE YOU KIDDING ME???? Why would I waste my time????
BTW, here are the replacements I’ve found and my daughter LOVES them: 1) Natures Path Kamut Puffs (Kamut is the ONLY ingredient) 2) Natures Path Rice Puffs (Rice is The ONLY ingredient) and 3) Barbara’s Bakery Breakfast O’s (contain corn)
ALL OF THESE ARE ORGANIC!!!!! The Breakfast O’s are the only actual “O’s” but my daughter has not seemed to mind as long as they are crunchy and yummy!
I really enjoyed the old Purely O’s. The new ones are awful. Can I really trust this company if they try to get away with substituting inferior products for ones of value? I will no longer look at the brand the same way, and will be more apt to avoid it.
I have been a Cascadian Farm fan for many years. Last week I purchased a cereal that I have purchased many times before and found it to be rancid. It was an eye opener for me as my first thought was to email the company to let them know there was a problem. It was a feeling of loyalty. Then I realized that Cascadian Farm was General Mills and truly a rancid box of cereal doesn’t really matter to them. It matter to me though. The cereal was multi grain squares. I ate it twice becaue I really didn’t believe it could be so terrible. The second meal confirmed that it was. …and so I am disappointed.
I also agree that the shift in formulation was abrupt and not publicly announced. The change caught many loyal users unaware. However, I think it is important to look at the bigger picture, here. In my humble opinion, General Mills is reformulating the cereal to be more palatable to the massive majority of unhealthy Americans in this country in an attempt to make a healthy (granted, no longer “healthiest”) breakfast option more attainable. It is unfortunate that the loyal consumers who bought this cereal for the original reasons are now suffering through this change. However, I believe that General Mills is actually taking the moral high ground by allowing the mass market a chance to experience a solid, healthy morning option that has most likely turned off many in the past.
Aside from the increase in sugar, the major difference with this cereal before and after the reformulation is that it *tastes* quite a bit cheaper and less wholesome. Not sure if this is the cornmeal, the fillers, or what, but it just doesn’t taste good anymore.
The other side of this is that the “organic” label depends on trust. Third party auditors make that designation for the USDA, and a huge fraction of those auditors are on probation because they weren’t actually doing their jobs and non-organic ingredients were getting in from overseas suppliers (in some cases, the ingredients didn’t even meet basic, non-organic safety standards). Given this, you have to *trust* that the organic label means something, and I frankly don’t trust that “organic” has any particular meaning as far as General Mills is concerned.
“So why hide the change? It’s not like people won’t notice – the ingredient list and nutrition panel are on the box, for crying out loud. Why the need for all this sneakiness?”
Presumably, isn’t the change reflected on the box? Why is it considered sneaky to change a product when the exact contents are listed, and the change is minor?
We’re looking for an alternative to “Purely” O’s now. And yes, it no longer tastes like an oat cereal, at least not as it used to.
Call small planet foods who owns cascadian farms under general mills at 1-800-624-4123 & ask them to bring the original cereal back. maybe they will bring back another version. I did. It can’t hurt.
My kids were eating the cereal & said this tastes like honey is on it & I looked at the side of the box & said oh no! There are only a few “clean” cereals out there that taste good & now our healthy cheerios are gone. I will have to try the ones listed above in the blog.
Eggs, bacon, sausage???? That is A LOT worse than cereal! I know you are joking, but just in case you aren’t, here is why they are bad: Cholesterol, hormones, antibiotics, salmonella, not to mention flesh, hair, tendons, blood vessels of animals all ground up – oooohhh, yummy! And talk about artificial colors, flavors, preservatives, nitrates and a bunch of other additives.
Here’s what’s good for breakfast: pancakes made – from scratch, not a box – with spelt and whole wheat flour, fresh fruit, a hot cup of chai tea with soy milk and organic sugar, and for protein, soy yogurt or scrambled tofu. Try recipes from “Vegan with a Vengeance”, by author Isa Chandra Moscowitz.
“Moral high ground”? Give me a break! There is no morality in a corporation! If you think so, you are VERY naive.
@Jane Melanson
I had the same experience. The cereal tasted so horrible that I though the milk was spoiled, but then I bought new milk and realized it was the cereal. It tastes like poison. I am very disappointed because I thought that this was a great cereal before and now I am afraid to ever buy it again.
Just a question if anyone knows. We eat Cascadian Farm cinnamon crunch, and the box says sugar organic. Just wondering exactly what that means. I am now just learning about the General Mills owning of this cereal. I didnt know if it was organic sugar cane with the water taken out or if its organic sugar with chemical proporties.