A message from General Mills communicated to attendees at the CDF Annual Education Conference and Food Faire on May 14th:

"We wanted to let you know about a change in our gluten-free Hamburger Helper offering. Essentially, our three Helpers items, Hamburger Helper Cheesy Hashbrown, Asian Helper Chicken Fried Rice and Asian Helper Beef Fried Rice will soon no longer be gluten free. This is due to a change in manufacturing facilities, and although gluten will not be used as an ingredient in any of the three products, we will no longer be able to guarantee that they will be free from cross-contamination."

Logistically, at the shelf, we are making efforts to minimize overlap and confusion. You may, however find both gluten-free and gluten containing product on the shelf at the same time while the new product works its way through the distribution system. Our recommendation (which of course you don’t need to be reminded of) is to read the information on the ingredient list. The callout "May Contain Wheat" will communicate which product has the potential of containing gluten.

While this decision is necessary for the Helpers line of product, it doesn’t change, in any way, General Mills’ overall commitment to the gluten-free community which goes all the way to the top of our organization. We’ll begin communicating this change at CDF conference on Saturday and via our GlutenFreely Facebook page and Twitter stream shortly thereafter. We understand that keeping track of ingredient changes in products is one of the greatest challenges in living gluten freely, and would like to request your help to communicate this change to your readers to maximize awareness and keep the gluten free community informed."

Please direct further questions to the Hamburger Helpers Consumer Services line at 1-800-828-3291 Monday-Friday from 7:30am-5:30pm CST.