That's not, exactly, what's happening. The sense of trust developed by these companies is enormous and confounding. Do customers and investors see Kellogg (NYSE: K) or General Mills (NYSE: GIS) as risky? Are snackers avoiding Hershey (NYSE: HSY) Reese's Peanut Butter Cups just in case? No, and no. In fact, stock in each of these companies has been doing well; General Mills closed today up a quite respectable $1.02, or 1.72%, to $60.43, near its high for the past month.

Kellogg is up about the same percentage, closing at $45.24, a gain of $0.53, near its high since taking a big dive with the rest of the market in November 2008. Hershey is doing the best of all, basking in its avoidance of the outbreak (at least, for now) and excellent results in its fourth quarter; up $2.38, or 6.78%, closing at $37.48, its high for the past few months and heading quickly toward its 52-week high.

The answer is in the decades. Food companies have done a fantastic job of making us feel loved without really doing anything to back it up. How much do you love Betty Crocker, the Quaker Oats guy, and Tony the Tiger? A lot, evidently, as American consumers have embraced these fictional characters, quite content to put their invented faces in their lunch boxes and on their breakfast tables. Our sense of contentedness and security in our breakfast cereal and granola bars will not be unsettled. It is only the few, the "green," the raving, who pound their fists on their cob tables and say, enough! and start making our own bagels and buying organic thick-cut oats from some local distributor.

The rest of us demand that our food companies maintain the sense of comfort and security without upsetting our tight schedules; without keeping us from our soccer games, our violin recitals, our busy lives juggling work and children and our American Idol.

I read through the comments on several mama- and green-focused web sites over the past few days and this is what I saw

• "This study is a bit of a rush to judgement and jumps to conclusion. Because ONE SAMPLE has low levels of mercury does not mean all the samples do, and does not mean that the mercury comes from HFCS. How did snacks, dairy products, and other foods without HFCS compare? As someone else pointed out, there are many factors that can contribute, including the water used in the manufacturing of the product, other ingredients, and air/packaging that it is exposed to. I'm not sure HFCS is the culprit or the main culprit." -- The West Looper, commenting at The Ethicurean
• "Some regular medicines are beneficial in low doses, but otherwise poisonous. Should we start worrying about hanging out in stone buildings? Granite has a low level of radioactivity. We might all develop cancer from older skyscrapers. I just can't get worked up about this sort of scare journalism. " -- Perri Nelson, commenting at Mom-101
• "I know a lot of people don't trust the FDA and EPA, but I trust them more than some "research institute" I've never heard of that self-publishes a report rather than submitting it to the peer-reviewed literature. I also know that the scientists at the FDA and the EPA have training in the relevant fields, because the government has hiring standards ... Also, remember natural does not automatically equal safe. There are many things in the natural world that will do you a lot more harm than trace amounts of mercury in your morning breakfast bar." -- Cloud, commenting at Mom-101
  

Are packaged food companies going to suffer from these recalls, these discoveries of toxic metals in the foods we feed our children at ever-more-alarming rates?

No. While I do not agree with the mood of complacency, this is what we've got and this is how the American consumer will continue to eat. As much as it hurts me to say this, if I were anyone but me, I would buy these stocks, buy, buy.