Cereal, oatmeal, granola and granola bars. All things kids, teenagers, and adults eat on a day to day basis. Obviously most think that the oats going into their bodies are healthy and nutritious, but fail to realize the harmful substance that may be inside.

   According to USA Today, “Glyphosate is applied to leaves to kill grasses and weeds,” and is also applied to the food people nationwide eat.

   Many parents are in a frenzy in the Bay Area due to the market of many of the cereals and granola bars being marketed at their children, such as Cheerios and Quaker Oats products.

   “I would feel scared for my child and discontinue buying the products,” Stephen Woerner (12) said when asked how he would feel as a parent.

   However, the students on campus are just that: students. A lot of them are concerned with the foods they eat and the things going into their bodies.

   Ryan Hary (11) said he’d like to know the foods containing the chemicals first, so that he “won’t buy those foods anymore,”

   After the outrage glyphosate has caused, many scientists have come to the defense of the chemical. Although a groundskeeper won a case for $290 million after he developed non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma from what he believes to be Roundup, scientists say that the same chemical isn’t dangerous in our foods.

   A study done by a team at the National Cancer Institute found, “In this large, prospective cohort study, no association was apparent between glyphosate and any solid tumors or lymphoid malignancies overall,”

   Kat Park (12), on the other hand, doesn’t particularly agree with this team’s conclusion, saying “Eating processed foods all the time has a high chance of causing cancer. I believe eating foods with that chemical occasionally wouldn’t cause cancer,”

   Yet, kids do eat these items all the time, so why are brands even putting a risk factor into their foods?

   The answers are unclear as to why companies are putting such chemicals in their foods, but the one things some can take away is the awareness of what is being put into the foods they eat.

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