General Mills imitation blueberries story keeps spreading; Total cereal exposed as deceptive

Saturday, February 05, 2011 by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...) Tags: General Mills, Total cereal, health news

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(NaturalNews) It's the story that just keeps going viral. We broke it here on NaturalNews with the release of The Blueberry Deception, a mini documentary that exposed the truth about many name-brand food products that fake their blueberries. You can watch it here: http://naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=7EC06D27B1A945...

It's also featured over at www.FoodInvestigations.com

Since the release of this video, it has gone viral across the 'net and picked up hundreds of thousands of views across NaturalNews.TV and YouTube while also breaking into mainstream media. To date, all the following news organizations have now covered this story:

Fox News, CNN, The Huffington Post, NPR, MSN, Yahoo News, LA Times, CBS News, NY Daily News and many more.

Just two days ago, I was contacted by a reporter from CBS News who was working up a story for CBS News Correspondent Susan Koeppen (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/02/03/ea...), who even went into a grocery store and filmed a segment talking about the very products I first mentioned in my documentary: Kellogg's Frosted Mini Wheats Blueberry Muffin, for example, which is made with artificial colors, sugars and oils that mimic the appearance of blueberries. (Kellogg's says the "Blueberry Muffin" part of the product name is just a description of the "flavor," not a description of what's actually in the box.)

I didn't get name credit in this particular story, but CBS News was kind enough to link back to the Consumer Wellness Center (www.ConsumerWellness.org), and that's all the credit we really need. I'm just happy this story is getting out there. Kudos to the mainstream media outlets who have been covering this story!

What's really interesting is that CBS's Koeppen has now hinted that this issue is headed to the FDA for review:

"Koeppen added the Food and Drug Administration will go after companies if they use deceptive labeling. 'We talked to them yesterday,' Koeppen said. 'They said they can neither confirm nor deny that they're looking into the fake blueberry issue. But yes, if there is something that is deceptive, the FDA sometimes steps in and makes those companies change their labels.'"

Wouldn't it be interesting of a documentary developed right here at NaturalNews actually ended up rattling the desks of folks at the FDA and General Mills who were forced by public pressure to put a stop to some rather blatantly deceptive processed food marketing practices?

The story behind the blueberries story

I created this documentary as a volunteer effort under the non-profit Consumer Wellness Center, and have never received any compensation for creating this, by the way (nor do I receive any compensation for any of the videos I create).

To this day, I'm shocked that nobody else did this first. I always thought that with such a deceptively labeled product on store shelves, somebody at USA Today, or the NY Times, or the Washington Post would investigate the issue and expose it long before we could.

But no. The mainstream media doesn't really do as much truly investigative journalism as it used to back in the Nixon days. Much of the media today, let's face it, is focused on entertainment. Explosions. Violence. Teen rock stars. Michael Jackson. It's junk food for your mind, or at least that's how it was described to me by a reporter who actually works for the media.

To actually see the media dig into a grassroots consumer issue and go up against the processed food industry is quite rare. Hence the need for organizations like NaturalNews. We tackle the stories the mainstream media often ignores. And we do it on a shoestring budget, yet based on solid research, reliable documentation of the facts, and an ever-growing audience of literally millions of readers who are increasingly tuning in to NaturalNews to get health information they can trust.

I'm not saying the mainstream media can't be trusted, but there's little question that when your network is funded by pharmaceutical money, any story that questions the safety of vaccines (for example), is going to be canned long before it hits the air. But here at NaturalNews, I have no boss. YOU are my boss, effectively, and I can't be fired by anyone for telling the truth. We only answer to you, the readers, and that's why you consistently find us reporting the truth, day after day, without any corporate agenda interfering with our work.

What will General Mills and Kellogg's do now?

What's interesting is that now, all of a sudden, the mainstream media is following some of our stories. NaturalNews is driving these stories that end up being replicated across the national media. I have over a dozen emails right now from reporters in major newspapers across the country who want a heads up on our next breaking food investigation story.

Think about that for a minute: The consumer health advocate (Health Ranger) that the mainstream media has largely ignored is now all of a sudden one of their sources. So now, I'm walking through the grocery store, and I'm using all the knowledge I've gathered over the years to identify all the really crazy chemicals and non-food items being put into the food supply by companies all the way from PepsiCo to Dean Foods. And now I'm making a list of which items are the worst offenders and deserve to be highlighted in the next Food Investigations mini-documentary.

Because, of course, there are more mini-documentaries coming soon, and you'll see them posted at www.FoodInvestigations.com

This has put me in the sad, sad situation of actually buying PepsiCo products at the grocery store. But it's all for research, I assure you. Still, it feels odd to even allow such items into my grocery cart, much less my home!

Meanwhile, I haven't heard a thing from General Mills or Kellogg's on the imitation blueberries issue. You would think that if these folks had a decent P.R. team, they would reach out and try to "educate" me about their foods and convince me they're not all that bad after all. But I haven't heard a thing. I suppose they're convinced it's better to just try to ignore this imitation blueberries problem and hope it goes away.

But it's not going away. If anything, the story is spreading and getting more attention.

Watch the hilarious new video: General Mills Mind Games

And now it's going to get even more viral with the release of a new comedy video I've just put together called General Mills Mind Games. It's a character voice skit between a customer named "Bob" and the General Mills customer service department.

Watch the video now (just 4 minutes) at: http://naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=851519FA1AC72A...

Please share this video, too, because people need to know this stuff. Entertaining videos really works to educate people while they're laughing and having fun! Everybody who has seen this 4-minute video loves it!

Well, except perhaps for the General Mills public relations team, which appears to be frozen in place on this whole issue, sort of like a deer caught in the headlights. But I guess if you're a P.R. lackey working for General Mills, the truth about what's NOT in their cereals kinda sucks, doesn't it? You can't exactly spin away the simple truth that the fruits mentioned prominently on the front label of Total Blueberry Pomegranate Cereal aren't even found in the cereal.

I would sure hate to have that job. It's way more fun to have no boss and be able to tell the truth rather than have to lie for some dishonest corporate employer.