Aldi is recalling three flavors of its Fit and Active frozen dinners after an Omaha family found a steel clamp sealed in a sesame chicken frozen entree.
“If’ it’s from a machine. If it’s a practical joke. Well, it’s not really funny just because if there’s small pieces,” explained mom Karen KaderKader purchased the sesame chicken frozen entree two weeks prior at a local Aldi store.
“I was trying to explain to [my daughter Ashley] that this is more meatier and stick to your bones more than this it’s heavier. Little did we know why,” said Kader
Bellisio Foods, which manufactured the frozen dinner, has launched an investigation to determine how the clamp snuck by their scales and metal detectors.
As for Ashley, she seemed more fazed that the preparation instructions didn’t include a contingency for metal clamps:
It disturbed me that, for one, I wouldn’t haven’t eaten it anyway–but I was going to give my sister food and I can’t microwave this with metal in it.
Steel Clamp Found In Frozen Dinner Leads To Recall [WOWT]
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I would understand if it were small pieces, but a LARGE clamp like that? Ridiculous really
that’s a way better toy than cereal or crackerjacks ever came with.
Its fortified with iron!
Learn to cook with your children and teach them to cook for themselves instead of giving them frozen meals! That way crap like this doesn’t happen!
One question. Why would she go to Aldi? For same price, she could have bought at an organic store same thing. Maybe it would be a bit more expensive, say 5 bucks, but at least it would be better for her and safer?
@Techno Viking: not always, remember the dancing deer story?
@Trickery: Learn to cook with your children and teach them to cook for themselves instead of giving them frozen meals! That way crap like this doesn’t happen!
Yes. That way you can feed them fresh vegetables chock full of e-coli.
@Techno Viking: Aldi is for people on a budget. And some people actually like Aldi’s quality (?) on certain products more than others. I always enjoyed Aldi’s yogurt it was significantly cheaper than other stores.
The clamp is a feature! It is provided for you to remove the meal from the microwave without burning your fingers.
@BuddyGuyMontag: Trader Joes is cheaper than Jewel and Dominics on most things here in the Chicago area. Unfortunately they are not a Union shop, but from discussions I’ve had before on Consumerist, I don’t think most of you people care. Anyhow… TJs is going to be comparable in cost to Aldi on most things and offer much higher quality, especially regarding frozen foods/ready to eat meals.
Just like any store, you do have to watch out, certain things can be way out of cost proportion.
@Techno Viking: Because you get a free clamp with the purchase of an entre. DUH!!!
TJs is not a union shop because they pay there employees well, have with a good benefits package, and an excellent work environment. There is no pressure to unionize when you treat your employees right.
That part would probably cost about $18 at the hardware store. I’d demand it back.
Alright people, I understand that. However, for almost same price you could buy better products just not a lot as many Americans do. I am from Europe, and a business student and yea even for me its hard with the money. But I’d rather buy something of a higher quality just something smaller without a clamp. America, has many choices, but many people are blind and don’t see those choices. Traders Joe’s is better than Aldi. I am not against Aldi, just want to tell you that you should eat better food. What matters is size and quality. Les you eat, better for you. Besides, that food package was loaded with corn, which all Americans have, or rather made of these days. Not bashing corn either, its good if its a great home cooked meal. But as you know anywhere u go, any food has corn oils which is bad for you in many ways.
@laserjobs:
very funny and unfortunately true. We should start to worry about the food supply from now on. Inspect any food that you buy. Whats next besides some pills that mom and her daughter found? Uh, more pills, or dare I say condoms? You be the judge. Very scary.
Trader Joe’s is owned by the same German family trust as Aldi.
@Techno Viking: There’s no Trader Joe’s in Omaha, according to my cursory search thru Google.
I get what you are saying, that people shoudl eat fresh foods, etc. And I agree with you in general. But this article has nothing to do with that. So the derail into “you Americans eat like crap” territory isn’t really on point.
Aw man! That clamp is the last piece I need in the “Build Your Own Entree Making Machine” promotion.
Hey! I recognize that! It’s a clamp for connecting rigid Stainless pipe. Now, if the clamp failed and the junction came apart, the container would be full of whatever was flowing through the pipes at the time (along with the floor, the machine, and whoever happened to be standing close by). It looks too perfect for that to have happened. Obviously, it landed in the container just before it was overwrapped. A metal detector should have easily caught that.
I can see this as a serious issue, mainly because the demographic who shop at Aldi’s might not be intelligent enough to properly deal with unexpected items in their food. This is demonstrated by the comment: “…and I can’t microwave this with metal in it.”
…So if your only concern is how to microwave the dinner with the metal in it, remove the metal.
@Techno Viking: Why don’t people recognize “organic” food for the big scam that it is? If I can’t afford to eat organic, there’s no benefit in it. Your typical Whole Foods is as full of processed junk, candy, and booze as a 7-11.
Um, wouldn’t you notice the significant difference in the weight of the box vs another box of the same thing when you picked it up..
@Techno Viking: Trader Joe’s isn’t in all areas. The closest Trader Joe’s is 300 miles away from where I live, but Aldi is right here.
Regardless of Aldi being a budget store, of course, basic quality control should happen – how could anyone miss something like this?
@sxs3200: Maybe she’ll find a cake mix with a crowbar in it to pry out that clamp.
@sxs3200: Way to be an elitist jerk. Poor != stupid, even if a young girl might have a rather silly reaction to such an unexpected thing.
@fluiddruid: Aldi the corporation does not make these entrees. They are made by anonymous food manufacturers. Just like your A & F doesn’t have a stable of 3/4 nude boys and girls in the back of your shopping mall ripping holes in the jeans–they are made by clothing manufacturers in far-flung places.
Many of these manufacturers make food for many different retailers. I’ve seen the same stuff in different packages at TJ’s, Super Target, and Whole Foods. Despite Aldi’s claims of having exclusive products, depending on the distribution chain, it is possible that this chunk of metal coulda ended up at an Albertson’s, your local grocery, or maybe at Sam’s Club.
@SaraAB87: Watch the video. The lady did notice. She thought she was getting more chicken. She shoulda brought her metal-detector wand with her.
@AngrySicilian: You’d be hard pressed to find even a handful of Trader Joe’s employees that would want to unionize. The company treats its employees *very* well. The general mangers make well into the six-figures. Heck, even the second-in-command pulls in $80-90k/yr. Plus they get something like 4 weeks of vacation from the day they start as a fulltimer. Finally, read up on their retirement package on the Wikipedia article on TJ’s.
@ChuckECheese: Organic isn’t a scam. The problem is with people who think it means something that it doesn’t and the manufactures who exploit those people.
@Techno Viking: I didn’t ask for a clamp in my frozen dinner, and I didn’t ask for a big pile of judgmental crap with my Consumerist story either. Nobody cares about the enlightened European viewpoint.
Looks fun to eat.
@DrGirlfriend: It’s also extremely easy to make home-made tv dinners. I have about 6 servings of chicken soup in my freezer ready to go when I need a quick meal. They’re stored in Ziploc storage containers or Gladware. Same thing can be done with stews and numerous other items. It’s so much healthier to eat that way rather than rely on Lean Cuisines or Smartmeals.
@ChuckECheese: While I admit the whole organic foods shopping center is a bit overblown, Wholefoods is the only place I can get cheap, bulk red lentils (the quick cooking kind) in my local area. You can get a lot of lentils for $1
“If’ it’s from a machine. If it’s a practical joke. Well, it’s not really funny just because if there’s small pieces,” explained mom Karen Kader
That hurt my brain.
It is worrying that this plants metal detectors where not working, i worked in a similar place and they tested the metal detectors twice a shift (approximately every 4 hours). Seems to me if they followed that practice they would have known if any food had not been checked for metal long before it left the factory.
I am so unbearably sick of scrolling down past an article here to see a comments list full of “Well if the OP is going to shop THERE they deserve what they get.” and “How can the OP use [object mentioned in article]? I never do and I am vastly superior because of it. If the OP is going to be that stupid they deserve what they get.”
When is this going to stop?
“I was gonna give my sister some food, but I caaaan’ microwaaave it with metaaaaal in it!”
Astute observation!
Want me to clamp em? Lemme clamp em!
“If it’s a practical joke. Well, it’s not really funny just because if there’s small pieces,”
Because if it was just really big pieces she might pick them out and still give the meal a try? What?
@RIP MRHANDS: And what is it that organic means to these people? And how did they reach their false conclusions? You can’t logically separate out the way food is sold (marketing) from the way it’s purchased. I’ll let y’alls know I have a previous life as a whole-foods/vegetarian chef, classically and professionally trained, chinese five-element, macropsychotic, blah blah blah.
Organic and whole foods, although they cost more, used to cost a whole lot less when it was something only grungy hippies ate. And I could get loads of good home-grown food at my farmers’ market for cheap prices.
Then, it seems to me about 2003 or ’04, things started getting really greedy. WF raised their prices once, twice, and more. Kale was now $2 a bunch when it used to be 69 cents. Organic butter was $6/lb instead of $3.50. Potatoes cost over a buck a pound; apples were about $1.25 apiece.
The farmers’ market got the greed too. Whereas before the goods were home-grown, dirty, occasionally buggy and lugged home in paper bags, now everything was boutique, artisanal, heirloom and worse. The last time I went was when somebody was selling tomatoes for $6/lb and potatoes for $4.99/lb. I inquired why they had to sell their goods for more than a health-food store, when the HF store could pay its bills selling similar products for less money.
And I heard that ear-splitting argument that made me despise health-food marketing ever since: “You really can’t place a price on quality/your health/the health of the earth.”
Um, yes you can, and people do it all the time. We all constantly make decisions about our relative needs based on what we have to spend. Even more annoying is that a lot of this money isn’t going to the earth, quality, or the earth; it’s going to corporations. The minimum wage is $5.85, people. Who can afford this?
@chiieddy: I like red lentils too. If you have an Indian or Middle-Eastern market near you, they’ll have lotsa red lentils, and other interesting legumes for sale too. I make an every-two-months trip to my health food store to buy whole wheat pastry flour, good corn meal, buckwheat, and other crunchy things (they were out of buckwheat when I went last).
@mgy: Poor girl. I admit I laughed. But come on, she’s a pubescent mouth-breather. Would any of us have done any better at her age? And is what she said any less profound than the blather you hear on the news every night? Momma’s comment is pretty spaced out too. Apparently the clamp doesn’t fall far from the machine.
@Kajj: It’s going to stop when Jesus comes back. People falsely believe they are going to find salvation on their dinner plate. They are in the stuperous throes of yet another commodities bubble. I agree that food snobbery is out of hand, and so is victim-blaming. They still haven’t learned that everything modern corporations touch turns to scheisse. I think people are looking for magical means to protect themselves from what appears to be an increasingly angry, greedy, dirty and random world. Nobody deserves clamps in their chicken entree, even if they buy their food from Chix & Clamps.
@Kajj: When you stop reading the comments. I’ve stopped reading comments on most of the blogs I read because so few of them offer much and here they turn into stupid debates or OP blaming.
“It disturbed me that, for one, I wouldn’t haven’t eaten it anyway–but I was going to give my sister food and I can’t microwave this with metal in it.”
We can however, laugh at stupid things they say. *shakes head*
The thing looks like a vacuum hose clamp. Not sure how that helps, but there it is
@DrGirlfriend: Thank you. The whining about how other people should be living their lives according to some random internet posters gets old.
@Kajj: When they turn off the inner-tubes, I guess…it is way too sanctimonious for me. As far as I’m concerned, it just makes the posters look like fools who have no better way to spend their time than picking apart the lives of people they don’t know.
@chiieddy: Thanks for letting us all know that you are a much better person than the OP. That adds a lot to the discussion of the article.
“If it’s a practical joke. Well, it’s not really funny”
Well somewhere out there there’s a food-prep robot who probably does think it funny.
Kiss my shiny metal ass human!
@k6richar: that’s all that hurt your brain? what about…
I can’t watch the video (damn you Flash!); so I can’t tell if she actually talks like this, of if whoever transcribed it is illiterate.
One wonders how many other large industrial fittings are missing from the plant. How do the machines still run without them?
That’s quite an “investigation” by the news station but I dont see any evidence that there is any actual recall — they just seem to be saying the local store took this brand off the shelf.
@ExecutorElassus: Click on the news link, the video their works. If she thinks her daughter is underweight – she aint