FDA Investigating Lucky Charms After Hundreds Of Illness Complaints Reported

After over a hundred complaints of illnesses after consuming popular children’s cereal brand Lucky Charms were received by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and thousands more on the website iwaspoisoned.com, the agency has confirmed it opened an investigation into the matter over the weekend.

There are now over 3,000 reports on Iwaspoisoned.com, which is a hub for people to log food safety reports, and the site says complaints began appearing in late 2021. Most of the complaints mention suffering gastrointestinal symptoms like nausea, diarrhea and vomiting after eating a bowl of the cereal. These debilitating symptoms lasted several days in some alleged cases.

Site founder Patrick Quade told The Wall Street Journal that this was the most complaints he’s seen for one product since iwaspoisoned.com began in 2012. Quade also clarified that the bulk of that record-smashing count was reported over the past two weeks.

Lucky Charms and their parent company, General Mills have denied that their product caused any illnesses and even took time to respond to one critic on Twitter who said they experienced “negative symptoms” from their breakfast.

Food safety is our top priority. We take your concerns very seriously. Through our continuing internal investigations, we have not found any evidence of consumer illness linked to the consumption of Lucky Charms. Please send us a DM so that we can gather additional details.

— Lucky Charms (@LuckyCharms) April 18, 2022

The FDA has been investigating the complaints for around two weeks. “The FDA takes seriously any reports of possible adulteration of a food that may also cause illnesses or injury,” the agency said in a statement. The agency confirmed that over 100 complaints were also lodged in their own systems.

It’s not clear yet what the verdict on this classic “magically delicious” cereal will be, but knowing that potential illnesses number in the thousands, there’s a chance plenty of parents might switch to Fruity Pebbles for a bit.