New Cancer Worry With Popular Cereal Sold In Illinois

A beloved cereal is a target of concern now.

For those of us who can't cook, cereal is a pantry staple. But a chemical found in a popular brand is raising some red flags about what you have in your cabinets.

Studies have been going on for a long time, looking for the presence of pesticides in cereal, specifically ones that can cause damage to humans, like developmental and reproductive issues and even cancer. One even found that the pesticide was detected 80% of the time in an average human consumer.

Pesticides & Cereal

Cereal doesn't seem like a food I would expect to find dangerous pesticides in but here we are. The controversial chemical is called chlormequat chloride and is used to control the stem height in grains to make harvest easier. It's the same chemical used in Roundup weedkiller.

It was found that the concentration of the chemical in cereal samples from 2023 was significantly higher than samples from previous years.

The cereal in question? It's Cheerios.

Obviously, the Cheerios aren't generously drizzled in the stuff and personally, I love Cheerios and they're even on my grocery list for this week so I'll still continue to eat them.

There isn't definitive proof that Cheerios can cause cancer but the concentration of the chemical in it is hotly debated. Some agencies say it's too low to cause humans major problems, others say it's too high to be safe for human consumption.

Pesticides can get on a lot of foods, to any extent, so just be as safe and healthy as you can with your grocery list.