General Mills Inc. will recall an estimated 1.8 million boxes of Cheerios that are supposed to be gluten-free, but was accidentally made with wheat flour. The errors are apparent effects of the sudden new changes of consumer demands. The recall only bears the weight of one percent of the annual sales for Cheerios.

In February, General Mills catered to a new market and began producing five alternative kinds of Cheerios. One of this is a variant of the most popular Honey Nut Cheerios which will be gluten-free. The new varieties appeared on shelves in late July, General Mills said, the Wall Street Journal reported. 

Jim Murphy, president of General Mills' Cereal Division explained how the confusion happened and why recalling the items would be the best option.

"Our Lodi production facility lost rail service for a time and our gluten-free oat flour was being offloaded from rail cars to trucks for delivery to our facility on the dates in question. In an isolated incident involving purely human error, wheat flour was inadvertently introduced into our gluten-free oat flour system at Lodi," Murphy said on the General Mills blog, the Inquisitr reported.

The Cheerios Twitter account also announced and alerted their consumers.


A spokeswoman of the company said there were illness reports online by those who consumed their products. There were also two complaints carried out directly to General Mills after being sick. Consumers were asked to verify the "better if used by" code on the packaging of Honey Nut Cheerios boxes that have dates between July 12-25, 2016 bearing code "LD" which signify where production plant it came from, ABC News reported.

We are so sorry & embarrassed to share that we have issued a voluntary recall of boxes of original and Honey Nut...

Posted by Cheerios on Monday, October 5, 2015