There have been stories resurfacing in the recent years that claim you should not eat Snickers candy bars or feed them to your child because the candy bar causes cancer. There is a video being shared on Facebook and YouTube which shows possibly thousands of boxes that contain Snickers candy bars being burned in a pit. The image says that production of Snickers has stopped in 65 countries and the main cause for this is because of cancer causing ingredients. I was able to conduct some research about these claims that Snickers causes cancer and was able to determine that this is in fact a hoax, one of many that are always going around on social media.
I looked up Snickers causes cancer on google which resulted in several sites that had proven the claims of the candy bar causing cancer were false. The original video which was posted in 2016 by euro-news, did show the boxes of Snickers candy bars being thrown in a pit and burned. However, if you watch the original video, you will see that the candy bars were being destroyed because there was a recall due to the candy bars possibly containing plastic.
The videos that have been circulating with the false claim that Snickers cause cancer actually use the original video without editing it, so people could actually see that the candy bars are being burned due to the recall not because they cause cancer. The false information which was shared in 2018 and again in 2019 has been spread so much that Snickers decided to post information on their Facebook page to let people know that these are false claims.
I went onto YouTube and searched Snickers and cancer and the search results showed several videos that were claiming Snickers causes cancer. I also googled mass recall Snickers and got many results from news sources such as Fox News and NBC news that all had articles that showed the candy bars were burned due to a recall.
While researching this story, I was shocked at how many fake news stories there are out there circulating on social media. The stories are shared by many who do not research the articles or videos but take them at face value and believe they are true. They do not mean to spread false information. I myself have shared many memes, articles and videos without researching to see if they are true. I have learned from this research that we all need to do our part in helping stop the spread of misinformation. If we are going to share things like this, we need to take the time to do the research. If you do not want to take the time to verify information, you should probably just stick to using your social media for keeping in touch with friends and family.
