I've had 2 pretty bad experiences with pre-packaged foods in the past 2 days. If you are squeamish or would rather just not know then please click the back button now and enjoy your day. Everyone else, read on.



Yesterday I got an Amy's frozen dinner for supper. It was some kind of pesto dish. I've eaten them occasionally before and they have been fine. Normally I get Amy's vegan products a couple times a week. So anyway I'm eating the pasta and everything is fine and then near the bottom there are about 4 or 5 long black hairs wrapped around the remaining pasta. Now I know these hairs didn't come from me because 1) my hair is about 1/8 inch long and 2) they were at the bottom of the bowl. I thought it was pretty gross but simply tossed it and wrote an email to Amy's letting them know about my experience.



After that experience you would think I would be more careful but no tonight at the store I decide to grab a packaged brownie. It was pretty dark in my kitchen tonight and I opened the package and ripped off a chunk of the brownie from the corner. I ate it and it tasted fine. I was going to save the rest for later but I decided to have one more bite. I rip off another chunk of it and notice it has what looks like a cobweb on it. I thought "that isn't right" and flipped on a light. I immediately saw half a dozen dead maggots sitting on the brownie and a couple still crawling around. I immediately spit out any remnants of the brownie from my mouth and took the rest of it and the receipt back to the store. They apologized and took the product off the shelves. So yeah...um, I was already planning on going vegan (and milk products are the last thing on my list to go) but damn this might speed up the process. In fact being a breatharian is becoming more and more appealing.





Edit - I have done a bit more reading on google and found out what was actually in the brownie is the larvae of the Indian Meal Moth. They look like maggots and leave the webbing I saw. Apparently humans actually ingest them quite often as eggs but I guess these brownies were just on the shelf too long. Not sure that makes the whole experience any less gross but I feel better about eating those than maggots for some reason, haha.

Ew. Nasty. Sorry you had to deal with that... I think I'd find it hard to eat *anything* for a while after two such experiences so close together!

I remember when i was younger,a friend and I each bought peanut butter cups.I ate mine on the walk home from the store and threw the wrappers on the street.



My friend later called me and told me that his were full of little spiders.We went back to look for my wrappers and found them full of spider webs.Now,I know whatb those bumps were

on the chocolate.



We went to the doctor to talk to him about it,but I ended up being fine.Just grossed out.

Update: I decided to go a google search and see if this happened to anyone else. It has and apparently they were not maggots but mealworms. I didn't get this exact same brownie but it was one made by the same company so apparently this is a big problem for them.



http://consumerist.com/2009/01/man-f...mments-content



Think I'll be fine but I WILL be calling the doctor in the morning.



Also I guess this means I'm no longer a vegetarian sense I'm devouring live worms, lol.

Well, I've never bought a Reese's brownie, but I buy Amy's products all the time. And now I'm grossed out.



I once bought some soft candy with a live worm inside it. It was in the pharamacy of the medical office building where I was working. I took it back to the pharmacy and showed it to the guy behind the counter, and he refused to do anything about it. All he said was, "Well, that's what happens when you buy candy in the summer." WTF?

Well I will still buy Amy's but probably not for a long time haha. As for the brownies, I'm done. The store manager was really nice to me and offered to let me take whatever I wanted as a replacement for free plus my money back. I got some sour candy but paid the difference. I would have taken the Amy's back but it was like 2 in the morning when I was eating it...I keep weird hours.

Be sure to notify the company. I am sure their quality control dept. would be concerned about this issue.

So gross but I think we all eat more bugs than we want to think about. Not just processed food either. I've stopped buying pre-mixed salad because it seemed like I would find at least one fairly large dead bug in every other bag and was having to sort through the lettuce leaf by leaf before I could eat it. Once I found a live little worm in the middle of a cashew which is all I can think about now when I eat cashews. My biggest bug binge was blackberries as a kid. My stepsister and I were picking them for my stepmother and eating just as many as made it to the basket. When we got home and washed them, zillions of tiny bugs came out. Pretty horrifying how many of them we had eaten. The hair thing, ewww- no excuse for that.

Gross. I am eating lunch too. Blech.



Luckily my lunch is homemade.

Hmmm the worm thing would make me a bit ewww but am i the only person who doesn't see a huge issue with stray hair in my food? As long as i don't swallow it as thats a bit irritating it doesn't bother me. It's like eating food i;ve dropped on the floor, no issue with it at all. Hmm Maybe i'm just weird.

Ugh. I was eating an Amy's California burger as I read the original post. Have you heard anything back from Amy's yet?

I was thinking that I've never found anything gross inside an Amy's frozen product (apart from the gravy in their nondairy veggie pot pie, but that's a different thing entirely) so perhaps the hairs in the Amy's product could actually be the intentional work of a disgruntled employee and not an accident, since there were multiple hairs found. Even so, the Amy's company should know about them.

^ I don't really find hair particularly disgusting either.



Maggots, on the other hand...*shudder*

I wouldn't freak out over a hair in my food if it were, say, my daughter's hair since I know her hair is clean. But a stranger's hair is gross. Also, shouldn't they be wearing hair coverings? It would make me wonder what other sanitary practices they are ignoring. Plus it wasn't just one stray hair- what was the person doing- just standing over the food shedding?



Sorry, OP, I'm probably not making you feel better. I'll be interested to hear what Amy's has to say about this too.

I am really grossed out but also happy because now I'm not missing chocolate bars so much! Every time I get a craving I will just think of those little worm things and I will be okay! haha

I worked in the food industry, it's impossible to have 100% purity in food. Chocolate is legally allowed to have a certain amount of bugs mixed in. We had a moth infestation a few months ago and I brought a few of them with me to Texas when I moved out. Even before that, I was really good about mixing my food around, checking for foreign bodies. The moths gave me SEVERE paranoia, so even now, 2 months after our last moth was seen, I still check EVERYTHING numerous times over.



I must confess something... my hair sheds worse than my dogs and it's very common for me to find my own hair in my food When I cook for others, I tie my hair back and am VERY careful, so don't worry about eating my food

I'm pretty shocked about the amy's hair incident. That would bother me more than the bug because it makes me question how sanitary they really are especially since it was more than one random stray hair. I'm curious about what their response will be. I've found random small bugs in my produce multiple times before but I've learned just to inspect it really well especially if the produce I get from farmer's markets. When I was younger I used to always find bugs in my food because the majority of the food we got was from the local food pantry and had been expired for years.

Yep got an email this morning. They were really nice and you could tell by the reply they actually read my email and it wasn't just a form letter. Here I'll just post their response for everyone to read:



Hello John,



Thank you for your email. Amy's Kitchen is a family run business and it's important for us to hear from our customers.



I'm so sorry about the hairs that you found in your Amy's Pesto Tortellini Bowl and I realize how upsetting it must have been.



Needless to say, we take every precaution here to prevent this kind of thing from happening. Our production workers wear smocks, gloves, arm covers, beardnets (as appropriate), and hairnets (double hairnets when necessary), but sometimes, in spite of our best efforts, mistakes occur. I apologize to you for any unpleasantness you may have experienced and if you send us your mailing address, I'm happy to send you five replacement coupons for this meal. You can use them to purchase any of our other 180 products.



Thanks again for taking the time to write and for your understanding and patience in this matter. We appreciate it.



Sincerely,



Carol Tamagni

Consumer Relations

Amy's Kitchen, Inc.



I told them it was not necessary to send the coupons but would be greatly appreciated if they wanted to send them.

the maggots... Now I'm freaked out about eating anything!

i should not be reading this thread while i'm eating.



fyi it's not just packaged food you have to be worried about, a couple months ago i was in the bulk food store and happened to spot something moving out of the corner of my eye. there was a HUGE squirmy black bug of some kind crawling around in the bin of potato starch. i'm a regular customer there and work in the same mall so i wasn't gonna freak out and cause a scene or something, i just very calmly went to the cash with my purchases and told the guy at the cash. he looked horrified lol. luckily i wasn't buying potato starch or anything resembling it so it didn't bother me too much. it happens. any time you buy flour, starch of any kind, oatmeal, that sort of thing, especially in bulk, there are almost always insect eggs in there that may eventually hatch in your cupboard. i always sift through flour before i use it especially if i've had it for a while, more than once i've found little black bugs in it. i've found them in oatmeal also, and hamster food. if it freaks you out put anything like that in the freezer overnight when you get it home, it will kill off any eggs. the eggs won't harm you it's just gross to think about it

Wow thats soooo EWWWWW!!!.....I would have totally freaked out brownies gross me out anyways but ICK!!!......and I cant stand hair in my mouth or near my food....I buy Amys accasionally but after that I wouldnt ever again.....Yikes....Just Yikes.....It takes me forever to get over something like this.....Like recently I bought a carton of soymilk and It was thick and grey and blue....it was awful and I havent been able to get myself to drink soymilk yet....its been three weeks....

I always put my flour in the freezer.

Me too. Stops the weevils from hatching. Because the eggs are there, whether you see them or not.



We learned in a nutrition class that a certain % of crap is allowed in food and it's still legal. Bugs, rat hair, etc. So I just try not to think about it.



Hair doesn't gross me out too much if I know who it came from. I live with huskies so there WILL be hair in my food. (My Secret Santa recipient doesn't have to worry--I'm more careful with food I'm making for others.) But stranger hair grosses me out. You don't know how clean they are. My dogs are clean.