Stuff you find in food...

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Well, corn flake crumbs, to be more accurate.

I was going to make some breaded pork chops and picked up a box of Kellogg’s Corn Flake Crumbs to use for the breading. I haven’t had a pork chop in yonks so I was really looking forward to this meal. I poured some crumbs in a bowl, egged the chops and put them in then poured more crumbs over the chops.

After I poured, there was a piece of metal sitting on top of one of the pile of breadcrumbs. It was a short, somewhat thick piece of wire - from my bonsai days I’d guess it was about 14 gauge wire or so - that was slightly crimped. I poured some more crumbs out, and sure enough, two more metal pieces fell out.

Of course, I decided the chops were, sadly, inedible - I had no idea if there were little metal filings in there as well, and fished out the three metal pieces. I then poured out the rest of the box, and found two more. Disappointed, I threw away the pork chops, set everything else aside and decided to deal with it in the morning.

As I lay in bed, I thought it over - clearly this was something that I needed to alert Kellogg’s to. Whether it was a manufacturing mishap, or somebody intentionally tampering with the product, if other boxes were similarly affected, and the next person was less observant, it could be huge.

So, I called Kellogg’s first thing in the morning. Within a couple of hours a courier arrived to pick it up for testing. I’m just waiting now to hear if they figure out what went wrong (the QA woman I spoke with said that they have a metal detector for the specific purpose of making sure bits of machinery don’t contaminate the product). Hopefully they figure out what it was. In the meantime they’re sending me vouchers for other stuff. Ohhh woo. I am a loyal Kellogg’s fan but I can’t say I won’t be hesitant to buy the crumbs again…

I’m just glad I didn’t actually eat the stuff and find it the hard way - those things could have done some serious damage.

2

Just a good thing you found the pieces in time. Lots of horror stories around at the moment.

3

I got a big piece of white rubber in a pie once. I mailed it to them and they sent me a coupon for free pie!

4

Thanks - definitely counting my blessings for that.

I forgot to ask everyone else to share any experiences finding unpleasant surprises in food…

5

The worst has to be getting near the bottom of a jar of mayonaise and finding a condom. Blech. Nearly threw out the potatoe salad at that point.

:smiley:

6

Nearly??? :eek:

7

^Ummm, it’s an old inside joke. :wink:

8

Things found in my school lunch in high school:

A wooden match
Two pennies
A very colorful, shiny beetle
A short piece of shoelace w/aglet

It’s not just lunch. It’s an adventure.

9

I always have to tell this story, because it’s so wonderful and terrible all at once.

When I worked in a bakery, we had to work really hard to convince the night bakers to wear gloves. Now, the type of people who will work graveyards shifts in a grocery store bakery for a little over minimum wage are bound to be an odd sort. We had a nice mix of ex-cons and delightful people from other countries who could carry on conversations in perfect English… until you asked them to do something (standard 6:00 am conversation between boss and Bo: “Bo, did you mop the fridge last night?” “Uhh… no understand?”. This would take place, oh let’s say five minutes after I’d arrived at work and Bo and I had engaged in a lengthy conversation about movies, music, and local sports teams). Anyway, so these guys were all nice enough, but a strange bunch and not all together wholly dedicated to proper hygiene. So eventually, they were convinced that gloves were not an option, and must be worn.

So, I’d guess about two weeks after this rule was put into place, a nice older gentleman shows up at the bakery counter, asking to speak with the manager. He’s holding a tray of chocolate brownies. He says, still calmly and quietly, that he’d like a refund on his purchase - he found a condom in the icing, and doesn’t want to eat the brownie. So we’re all freaking out, like, if I thought there was condom in my food, there’s no way I’d be anything close to calm. So yes, it turns out it was just the finger of a glove that had ended up in the icing and on this guy’s dessert, but geez. It really, really left us wondering what went on during night shifts.

As for my own exciting food discoveries… I once found a drill bit in a salad. It was big and I found it about two bites into the salad when my fork hit it, so no harm done. But free meal! Woohoo!

10

Let’s see…

Live meal worms in a brand new, sealed can of honey roasted peanuts (eeew!), and also in a bag of “bulk” sesame seeds (ruined my plans!).

Have found various coccoon-like things in packaged foods. Never really held that against the companies, because where there is food, there are bugs.

Once, ordered a soft-serve frozen yogurt, a delicious Dutch chocolate. About 2/3 of the way through it, found a hair firmly embedded in the yogurt, so I knew it hadn’t come from my own head.

My mom once found what appeared to be rodent poop in a bag of nacho flavored chips purchased from a vending machine. She sent it to the company and they sent her a ridiculously large box of snackfoods.

But wierd, foreign, non-animal/bug related stuff? No, I guess I’m pretty lucky.

BTW, I just buy generic cornflakes and run them through the food processor. That’s got to be way cheaper than buying precrushed stuff.