GMOs In Gluten-Free Nacho Cheese Doritos

by Celeste Clevenger

I came across a post on a blog the other day. It was a gluten-free blog discussing Nacho Cheese Doritos. A few people were commenting on the blog post and they all were so happy to find out Nacho Cheese Doritos were gluten-free again. But is this really a food people following a gluten-free diet should be eating?

I’ll admit, ten years ago my mouth did the happy dance whenever it ate Doritos. But that was ten years ago, and I’ve learned a lot about food since then.

Doritos may be gluten-free now, but maybe we should be asking just what are they full of?

The list of ingredients in Nacho Cheese Doritos:

Corn, Vegetable Oil (Sunflower, Canola, and/or Corn Oil), Maltodextrin (Made from Corn), Salt, Cheddar Cheese (Milk, Cheese Cultures, Salt, Enzymes), Whey, Monosodium Glutamate, Buttermilk, Romano Cheese (Part-skim Cow’s Milk, Cheese Cultures, Salt, Enzymes) Whey Protein Concentrate, Onion Powder, Corn Flour, Natural and Artificial Flavors, Dextrose, Tomato Powder, Lactose, Spices, Artificial Color (Including Yellow 6, Yellow 5 and Red 40) Lactic Acid, Citric Acid, Sugar, Garlic Powder, Skim Milk, Red and Green Bell Pepper Powder, Disodium Inosinate, and Disodium Guanylate.

So Now Here’s the Big Question?

Nacho Cheese Doritos are gluten-free, but did you figure out what Doritos are full of? I’ll give you a hint – it has to do with all the words highlighted in bold in the ingredient list above.

GMOs in Nacho Cheese Doritos

From April 2012 – October 2012, a government laboratory in Hong Kong in collaboration with the Center for Food Safety tested several US products for see if they contained genetically modified corn (use chrome browser to translate report into English).

Nacho Cheese Doritos were one of the products tested. They were testing for 10 specific GM corn strains. The Doritos were found to contain 7 – 9 different strains of GM corn.

Pepsi, who is the parent company to Frito Lay, Tropicana, Quaker, Gatorade, Izze, Mountain Dew, AMP Energy, Seattle’s Best Coffee, Tazo iced teas, SoBe, Aquafina, Brisk, Lipton, Propel Zero, Miss Vickie’s, Sabra hummus, and Sunchips, spent $1,716,300 to stop GM foods from being labeled.

Can you see why now?

This is why labeling foods is something these manufacturers are fighting so hard against. Their products are full of them. GMOs are not something people with food intolerances, celiac or autism should be eating – or anyone for that matter. Would you continue to buy Doritos if you knew they were laden with GMOs?