The Cheerios Story

You may recall that Caroline had an epic bout of vomiting a few weeks back. The day before she got sick I had bought a box of the new gluten free honey nut Cheerios that had just come out. General Mills recently began to market all of their Cheerios as gluten free, after spending the last couple of years developing some fancy mechanical system to sift out contaminating grains from the oats they use. Anyway, for the record Joel told me not to give her any because he didn't trust that they could really be gluten free. Of course I didn't listen and gave her a single bowl of them that Friday morning.

All seemed well for a while. Then Saturday night rolled around and she was so sick I had to sleep on the living room couch with her so I could hold a bowl in front of her every 20-30 minutes. She didn't have a fever or any other symptoms and of course with her history I was suspicious that the episode could be related to her celiac disease, and the timing of it the day after she had tried a new food.

During the next couple of weeks I began to hear about people getting sick from eating the supposedly gluten free Cheerios, and eventually a recall was announced of 13 days worth of honey nut cheerios produced at a California facility in July due to wheat contamination. Unfortunately I didn't save the box of Cheerios so I can't check the code to confirm that the box was part of the recall. But I would bet that it was. No more Cheerios for my sweet girl :(