September 5, 2017

Last night, friends at GMO Inside shared a new campaign that they are launching, targeting the makers of RX Bars.

I told them I wasn’t surprised. When I was walking the floor at an industry show known as Expo East a year or two ago, their booth impressed me with its complete lack of passion and lack of knowledge about the product, its supply chain and the industry.

Food is a hot space right now, and there are a lot of opportunists jumping into the industry. Many lack the deep knowledge required to create safe products and a strong supply chain, and many are looking to make a quick buck. It reminds me of the tech bubble in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

So when a campaign launched this week, calling out the makers of RX Bars, I responded, “Not surprised.” I wasn’t.

You can’t fake food. You can’t fake passion.

But about an hour later, I received the following email. Our work is always to protect those with life-threatening food allergies.

Please read.

RX:Bar snack = RX for an Epipen

My daughter who has no previous history of food allergies went into anaphylaxis after eating an RX:BAR.

She now has an RX for an epi pen after a snack that brands itself as a clean snack. The cruel irony of it all is we know the dangers of conventionally grown foods.

We run a small farm in the Finger Lakes, we have dedicated our lives to growing pure, chemical free, gmo free foods for our community.

I invest countless hours into purchasing, cooking, processing and serving homemade food.

I am the queen of organic tailgating, I’ve almost always got something I made to eat in our car cooler. Our family, like many farm families scrambles like hell to keep up in summer and actually cook the foods we bring to NY tables.

August was insanely busy on the farm, I got caught up in a town run much longer than expected since there are always labor issues in this intense time.

My kids were super hungry during this unplanned and longer than expected trip, so I agreed that they could have an RX:Bar while we were in the Vitamin Shop getting some refills for our homeopathy kit.

I’d seen the product so many times, I read the ingredients; again, and said “okay.”

We have no food allergies, there was no obvious junk in there.

Hours later I was speeding to the emergency room.

It is because of your work that I instantly recognized the signs. We have no history of food allergies, you were my introduction to the seriousness of the situation.

I began following you to be a better friend, business owner and to make my kids safe classmates.

Your words always hit home, and I can’t thank you enough. I knew to act because of you, I knew what I was seeing and I knew to leave the farm immediately because of your tireless work.

So please share this post until we can better understand what is in these bars and hear from others who may have experienced an allergic reaction.

Please note: we asked the mother who sent us this if she had her child tested for food allergies.  She responded, “We had her tested for all the individual ingredients, she does not react. It’s something in the the bar itself.”

Until we know more, we will continue to ask this question: Are we allergic to food or to what’s been done to it?

And what has been done to the ingredients in this product?