We have all seen the Wheaties boxes sporting photos of Olympic gold medal winners. USA now has a gold medal winner who is gluten-intolerant. How cool would it be if her smiling face showed up on one of the gluten-free Chex cereal boxes? Olympic swimmer Dana Vollmer won the gold in the 100-meter butterfly in world-record time at the 2012 London Games. Vollmer’s first Olympics came at the age of 16 in Athens in 2004 as part of the silver-medaling 4×200 freestyle relay, but an unknown illness kept her from competing in Beijing in 2008. Among her symptoms were stomach aches bad enough to land her in the hospital multiple times, and increasingly unexplained fatigue that cut her endurance and training. When Vollmer received her diagnosis it changed the way she ate. She possesses an allergy to eggs and several food sensitivities, gluten being one of them. “The diet changes have been fantastic,” Vollmer said. “It’s definitely hard going from an athlete who used to eat a lot of carbs — spaghetti, any form of carbs — to really searching for healthy gluten-free food.” So, what do you think? Should General Mills/Chex pursue putting Vollmer on to their boxes? If so, please sign this petition and send it along!

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