Cheerios

Cheerios, the first oat-based and ready-to-eat without cooking cereal, is a brand of breakfast cereal created in 1941 and marketed by the General Mills cereal company of Golden Valley, Minnesota. In some other countries (including the UK), it is sold by Cereal Partners under the Nestlé brand. These products marketed as "Cheerios" differ from the US - for example, in the UK and Ireland, consisting of "four grains" (actually five, but four colours of 'O's): maize, oats, barley, wheat and rice.

Health appeal

Cheerios' health appeal stems from its lack of artificial flavoring and coloring, low sugar, fat, and cholesterol content, and being a source of dietary fiber and folic acid. Beginning in 1996, Cheerios featured the American Heart Association's seal of heart and checkmark indicating it had met the AHA nutrition guidelines for its food certification program. This in part led to Cheerios being issued the first health-claim confirmation by the Food and Drug Administration that Cheerios, oatmeal, and oat products can lower the risk of heart disease in 1997, along with a medical journal study in 1998 indicating that Cheerios could in fact lower blood cholesterol levels when eaten as a part of a diet low in saturated fat and cholesterol.

Related Topics:
Sugar - Fat - Cholesterol - Dietary fiber - Folic acid - 1996 - American Heart Association - Food and Drug Administration - 1997 - 1998

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Recently, General Mills created an all-natural organic food version of Cheerios. While many companies such as Frito-Lay have created organic foods with the same brand name as the original, General Mills chose not to do this, to the dismay of organic food promoters, and used the Cascadian Farm brand in order to sell Purely O's. The corporate decision was made so that consumers would not view the original Cheerios as somehow inferior to the organic Purely O's.

Related Topics:
Organic food - Frito-Lay - Purely O's

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