Rice Krispies and Coco Pops cereals will no longer be made from whole grains of rice, Kellogg’s has revealed. The cereals have been reformulated, with Rice Krispies now using rice flour instead of rice and Coco Pops containing a blend of rice flour and corn flour. Kellogg’s blamed “changing weather conditions” for affecting the quality and availability of the ingredient. Rice Krispies were previously made by cooking medium-grain rice kernels with a malt flavouring solution, before flattening and cracking them with heavy rollers.
Left out here: Leaves out what changes the picture
The article never says that the new recipes list wheat gluten as an ingredient, so the cereals are no longer suitable for people with coeliac disease or a wheat allergy. A reader may assume the switch from whole rice to rice flour changes nothing that matters for their diet.
They are then oven toasted until they puff up. Kellogg’s sources its rice from Arkansas, California and Louisiana, all of which have suffered floods and strong storms in recent years. In California, rice farmers have endured mega-drought conditions before flooding, while farmers in Louisiana and Arkansas have suffered flash floods and strong winds.
The Telegraph reports that Kellogg's has reformulated Rice Krispies and Coco Pops because of "changing weather conditions". It lists drought, floods and storms hitting the rice farms that supply Kellogg's, but never says that warming makes such extremes more frequent or more severe. A reader is left to treat the weather as bad luck rather than climate change.
NewsCord staff selected this article for review and pointed the model at passages to examine. Every finding quotes the article.
Leaves out the climate link
Serious
“rice farmers have endured mega-drought conditions before flooding, while farmers in Louisiana and Arkansas have suffered flash floods and strong winds”
Why this matters
The words "mega-drought conditions", "flash floods" and "strong winds" set out a run of extreme weather across three rice-growing states, and the article ends there.
The impression it gives
A reader believes these droughts and floods are just a spell of bad weather with no wider cause.
The context
Human-caused warming has made agricultural drought and heavy rainfall more frequent or more severe. The article never uses the word climate or warming anywhere.
How we know
On the recordThat warming has made hot extremes, heavy rainfall, agricultural and ecological drought, fire weather and intense tropical cyclones more frequent or more severe.ipcc.ch (opens in a new tab)
On the recordIt is unequivocal that human influence, chiefly the burning of fossil fuels, has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land.ipcc.ch (opens in a new tab)
Checked against the whole articleIt never uses the words “climate” and “warming”.
“Kellogg’s blamed “changing weather conditions” for affecting the quality and availability of the ingredient”
Why this matters
The Telegraph repeats Kellogg's phrase "changing weather conditions" and offers no account of why the weather is changing.
The impression it gives
A reader takes the change in the weather as the whole explanation, with nothing driving it.
The context
The weather is changing because human influence has warmed the planet, and that warming is loading the dice towards the droughts and floods the article describes in its own voice.
How we know
On the recordIt is unequivocal that human influence, chiefly the burning of fossil fuels, has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land.ipcc.ch (opens in a new tab)
On the recordThat warming has made hot extremes, heavy rainfall, agricultural and ecological drought, fire weather and intense tropical cyclones more frequent or more severe.ipcc.ch (opens in a new tab)
Elsewhere in the article“all of which have suffered floods and strong storms in recent years”
Kellogg's blamed changing weather conditions, and its US rice-growing regions have suffered drought, flash floods and strong storms in recent years. Climate change is making extremes like these more frequent and more severe.
Leaves out what changes the picture
Minor
What is missing
The article never says that the new recipes list wheat gluten as an ingredient, so the cereals are no longer suitable for people with coeliac disease or a wheat allergy. A reader may assume the switch from whole rice to rice flour changes nothing that matters for their diet.