Chipotle has made the final changes that take the Denver-based restaurant chain from mostly non-GMO to non-GMO.
by Hannah Moore
April 28, 2015—At Chipotle Mexican Grill, natural fast food is not all talk. The restaurant says it has officially finished eliminating all GMOs from its food. It the first national fast-food restaurant chain to do so.
Chipotle CEO Steve Ells has said that the lack of agreement on the effects of GMOs motivated the company to not use the controversial method, reported the San Jose Mercury News.
The chain has non-GMO corn planted for its tortillas. It also uses sunflower oil or rice bran oil instead of soybean oil for its chips and taco shells. The crops that these oils are made from are not genetically modified.
GMOs are organisms that have been given extra genes through genetic engineering, according to a USA Today article. This modification is done to help the food crop—often corn or soybeans—resist herbicides or plant diseases.
Despite the FDA’s stance that GMOs are safe, many Center For Food Safety activists push for regulations that require labeling GMO foods, and many Millenials don’t want GMOs in their food. Several companies have responded to this trend by removing ingredients that customers don’t want. Whole Foods strives to have all its GMO-contained foods labeled by 2018. PepsiCo also recently announced it is removing aspartame from Diet Pepsi.
About 80 percent of consumer goods in the U.S. have GMO ingredients. This is because in 2014, 93 percent of corn and 94 percent of soybeans U.S.-grown came from GMO strains, according to the USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service.
Chipotle first pledged to remove GMO ingredients from its food in March 2013.
Most fountain drinks at Chipotle will still contain GMO ingredients, but the restaurant is currently testing non-GMO, cane sugar root beer from Maine Root.
The GMO removal will not affect Chipotle’s food prices and apply to the company’s ShopHouse Southeast Asia Kitchen locations as well.
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