Will Wheaties Cereal Stick To A Magnet Because It Has Metal Flakes?

Wheaties may be the breakfast of champions, but it’s also attracting other attention over claims the cereal sticks to magnets because it has metal flakes. But is it true? The short answer is “yes!” More importantly, is the popular morning ritual back for your health? Read on..

A video making the rounds the internets proves that Wheaties has metal contained within the crunchy flakes by showing it actually being attracted to a magnet. A General Mills spokesman says the alarming reaction is caused by iron fortification in the cereal while maintaining there is no cause for alarm.

ORIGIN: In January 2014, alternative health and conspiracy web site NaturalNews.com posted a video showing Wheaties cereal flakes sticking to a magnet. The site claimed that this was irrefutable proof that the cereal is “full of metal fragments.”The video, created by “The Health Ranger” Mike Adams, was created to give the impression that the flakes were hidden in the cereal by a ne’er-do-well corporation: Wheaties breakfast cereal, manufactured by General Mills, has been found to contain so many microscopic fragments of metal that individual flakes can be lifted and carried using common magnets, a Natural News Forensic Food Lab investigation has found and documented. However, the experiment performed by Adams is not new, nor is it limited to Wheaties. A spokesman for General Mills (which manufactures Wheaties) told us that the reaction is caused by iron fortification in the cereal and is not a cause for alarm: We see this science experiment done pretty frequently with any iron fortified cereal – it makes for a cool video! Iron is really important for your body to function well, and your body only absorbs as much as it needs. h/t snopes

Indeed, in 2011, Scientific American posted instructions on how to perform the experiment with any iron-fortified breakfast cereal..

What does your breakfast cereal have in common with Earth’s crust? They both have some of the same materials in them. It might seem strange to compare a bowl of cornflakes to a pile of dirt. But science can help us find one of the most common elements on Earth in your cereal: iron.