Cereal with BHT!!!

I have been eating the Chex cereals, mainly cinnamon, thinking it was so great to have a cereal that was gluten free and they say all natural on the box. Well, going to visit my daughter next week and she was buying things I could eat and when she read the ingredients on the Chex box she saw that they use BHT as a preservative. So disappointed. Any cereals anyone has found that are actually good for us?

BTW, have found Pamela's bread mix and cornbread mix to be wonderful. Guests had the cornbread recently and loved it.

It's the BHT I'm upset about - it's a preservative used in cosmetics and shouldn't be used in cereal!!! Re milk, I use Silk Unsweetened Original Almond milk. Doesn't have any crap in it as many, many non-dairy does.

You mean Honey Nut Chex, right? Honey Nut Cherrios have wheat. You're not whinning - I agree, it really sucks that our items are so expensive. I was so happy to have them as a treat and a breakfast option. I wrote them but you should as well. Their answer was that the FDA allows the use of it because old people die anyway!
Here it is: Thank you for contacting General Mills about the use of Butylated Hydroxytoluene (BHT) in our products. BHT is used in trace amounts in some shortenings and oils to prevent oxidation and rancidity. Though its use is minimal, there have been several misunderstandings and concerns about the safety of BHT.

Some people are concerned that BHT might cause cancer. In some animal tests, BHT given with strong carcinogens appears to enhance the carcinogens′ effects. But in other tests, BHT actually inhibited the carcinogens′ effects. BHT, by itself at high levels, has been shown in two studies done by the National Cancer Institute to be without carcinogenic effect. Similar studies from Japan confirm BHT′s safety. Finally, a recent study from Denmark is puzzling to scientists. BHT-treated animals had more tumors, but only after living 50 percent longer than untreated animals. It seems likely that the tumors were a natural expression of old age.

Even if BHT is not on the label, you do not know that there is no BHT in the cereal (or other food product). The phrase "no preservatives added" allows preservatives to be included in the ingredients used to make the food product. So a BHT-containing vegetable oil can be used to make a no-preservatives or no-preservatives-added product.

There is another twist to this dilemma. BHT can be added to the cereal packaging. BHT has a positive vapor pressure at room temperature. This vapor surrounds the food particles and adsorbs on top the surface of the food, thus activating its antioxidant properties. This BHT also does not require a label listing for BHT. I've used this technique for preserving coffee beans, nuts and spices, gluing a small piece of felt with BHT in it to the bottom of canning jar lids. I have also put pieces of BHT-saturated paper in a folded-up coffee filter to accomplish the same end. It keeps the flavors from going "off" (rancid).

BHT does not cause cancer. The original studies suggesting that it does were flawed, failing to account for the carcinogenic activity of aflatoxin. But BHT is a known cancer promoter (and cancer anti-promoter), which means that it can make other carcinogens stronger (or weaker), depending on whether BHT induction of liver enzymes creates a higher level of the active carcinogen (or a lower one).

The most likely reason that BHT causes longer lifespan in mammals is that it decreases food consumption. In other words, animals eat less food if it has BHT in it. And they eat the lowest amount of food when the BHT level is highest. Food restriction produces a life-extension benefit, providing that some acutely stressful mechanism doesn't kill the food-restricted animals before they can reach their increased maximum-lifespan potential. In other words, food restriction and its related effect of lowering metabolic rate increases maximum lifespan but decreases animal robustness against stress, trauma, infection, and similar life-and-death challenges. So in a well controlled laboratory, feeble animals are protected from real-life hazard that free-living animals might or would likely face.

Does this help?