No, I'd march the meals right back to my grocer (Publix), who would probably refund my money right then. Because they're cool like that.

Then I'd write some nasty letters and see what happened.

I would definitely want my money back. The only coupons I ever get for Lean Cuisines are like $2.00 off if you buy 6. I am definitely staying away from these from now on and anyway I like the Smart Ones better (and they are cheaper).

That's why I try to stay away from frozen food.

Here a story: my GF's mom's coworker's husband (i know..) bit onto what looked like the end of a syringe when eating hors d'oeuvres from Costco (McCain foods brand). Anyways the wife calls up McCain foods, they send someone THAT DAY to recover it and promised to send her coupons....

It rocks by boat how many companies like to compensate unsatisfied customers with MORE UNSATISFYING PRODUCT.

The only time I ever accepted this is when Primo recalled/discontinued all of their mushroom soup and gave me coupons with the assurance that they were never going to make that soup again. I thought it was tasty - I never found out why they recalled it.

In other news: Lean Cuisine dinners without plastic are also completely inedible.

@Ash A: A SYRINGE?????

Please tell me he took pictures and went and had a battery of blood tests done!

Coupons, huh? For biting into a (possible) syringe?? Coupons.

It rocks by boat how many companies like to compensate unsatisfied customers with MORE UNSATISFYING PRODUCT.

@unobservant: THIS. That always made zero sense to me. You'd have to do a whole lot of convincing that the problem with the product would not happen again and I don't think that's going to work in this case.

@unobservant: Because sometimes the dissatisfaction is an isolated event (such as getting a piece of plastic in your food, or getting peppers instead of pepperoni) and not an overall "omg I am never goin to buy ur stuff again and I'm bloggin about dis so everyone will know p.s. Wal-Mart sux" hatred of a certain product.

I know that lean cuisine is a good way to portion control and have what feels like non-diet food, but.. Isn't eating REAL FOOD in controlled portions better for you?

Plus! You get the added benefit of NO PLASTIC! Yay!

Plus (depending on how you prepare it yourself) no preservatives, no artificial flavor crap, and real honest to goodness FOOD that your body needs, not this fake shit.

I'm not opposed to getting free food from a bad food experience, but I'll tend to wait a while or try a different location.
For non-food, its almost always worth it, unless a particular brand burns you really bad.

@Ash A: By end of a syringe, do you mean the plunger or either a luer lock tip or slip tip end? Sometimes these are used w/o needles to take samples as they are sterile, and can extract an exact amount of product to be sampled.
Or do you mean a needle, and if so was it the lancet portion of the needle or the hub? Or was it the protective shealth a needle is stored in? Surprisingly, they do make adapters for grease guns which are pretty much needles with a zerk fitting on the hub. They use these to inject grease into parts that can't have zerk, such as a rubber bushing. And there are many food grade greases that they use in food prep machinery.

Don't just jump on frozen foods, I've had problems like this at reasturants (though they give me my money back, not coupons). I've had a chicken sandwich with the plastic wrap still on the slice of american cheese (and melted). I've had bones in sushi. I've had sand in my scalops. I could spend all day talking about foreign objects in food prepaired at decent reasturants.

Just saying, don't think this is exclusive to frozen food.

Has anyone ever heard of the law of averages or that we are only human. Mistakes happen it is how the company responds to the mistake that should matter most. I eat those meals every day almost without a single problem. It did have a quality control issue with another food vendor recently and got $10 worth of coupons off any of their products about 5x the value of what I had bought. Great response time and great reaction. An honest mistake. Moral don't get bent out of shape too easily. ok now everyone can tell me how dumb I am.

The plastic parts were probably meant for Swanson's Hungry Man products.

@Oranges w/ Cheese:

Your intentions are good, but lean cuisines are fast, cheap and work if you keep up with it.

Not everyone has time to shop, prepare and cook a healthy meal. It's also more expensive.

As far as plastic pieces in the Lean Cuisines... a little plastic never hurt anyone ;) It probably isn't much worse than what you are exposed to at any restaurant or any other packaged food. You don't know what happens to your food from source to delivery. Yo probably eat tons of things that would gross you out.

@QuanikaJulisa: LIES. Everyone knows Hungry Man includes genuine steel and iron bits, Not that girly plastic. How do you think they get it up to 1lb of food?

@Git Em SteveDave loves this guy->★: Okay, now I need to work the word "zerk" into conversation whenever possible. It sounds like something the Sneetches used.

@unobservant: It's an attempt to abort the possibility of a dissatisfied customer cutting all ties with the company. They probably wouldn't mind giving a refund, but that would be missing an opportunity to prove they can do better. In business, whether you know your product is shit or not, you have to make that attempt.

What they should do is offer a refund and the coupons. It's likely they don't offer refunds because stores are often willing to remedy out of their own pocket already. Though I've never had a case of poorly packaged food like this, I've returned plenty of spoiled or already opened product that couldn't be the fault of the retailer. In those cases, the grocery store doesn't even ask questions, they just credit me or let me get a replacement.

I'd want a coupon for a toy made by Mattel. I'd even give them back some plastic to help make it.

@AlteredBeast:
I'd venture that bones, assuming they're the bones of that particular fish, and sand in your scallops is way different than plastic in your food. One is to be expected, and the other is the result of someone failing to properly rinse your seafood.

Oh, plus, people pay a lot of money to have sand in their steamers. That's what the bowl of water is for!

I found a tiny piece of blue plastic in one of mine a few weeks ago but i honestly didn't think anything of it... after all these stories, I really wish I would have kept the thing!

@chrisjames: First of all, I apologize for saying "by" instead of "my."

Secondly, as a former grocery store employee, it's NOT a good idea to return opened product to the store (unless it's a store brand). Yes, it's convenient but, if it's an actual problem with the quality of the item, it's not tracked. At the service desk, we used to tell people that, if they want the company to know about it, they should get the company to pick it up.*

*Of course, nobody cared about having the company know about it... they just wanted their money back. So we gave them a refund and either threw the item out or stuck it in the store credit bin. You know you were going to see the same customer in a week all mad because the company was still making crap product.

@DoubleEcho: They seem to run fast and loose with the definition of "food" though.

Remember: Non-toxic and edible are NOT the same.

@Git Em SteveDave loves this guy->★:

It was the needle end and the most plausible explanation is, as you said, for sampling.

It didn't puncture his skin but that whole family is way too naive for their own safety. I would not have returned it and would have called a lawyer before I even talked to them.

@unobservant:

Good point. At the same time, the store IS the vendor selling the product. Why can't the store alert the manufacturer as well?

@DoubleEcho:

With lead, of course. Next on the market: Chinese Hungry Man! You decide if it indicates a racial slur, country of origin, or type of cuisine inside!

I once bought a Lean Cuisine "vegetable egg roll with rice and vegetables" that somehow got through quality control without the egg roll. I sent them an e-mail, they sent me a coupon for a free Lean Cuisine and several other coupons. Perfectly satisfactory resolution.

I can understand wanting a refund for the one with plastic in it, but if you have the receipt to verify what you paid for it, this is easier to achieve by taking it back to the store, not insisting on a check from the manufacturer. Demanding a refund for the other, non-defective products in your freezer is probably not going to go anywhere. Again, returning them to the store is your best bet.

This is the same ripoff as an airline giving you "$25 travel certificates" for your inconvenience, etc.

I worked for over 20 years in that industry and we employees regarded those certificates as being less useful than toilet paper. At least you could use the TP to wipe.

We had boxes and boxes of them in the back. They were used basically to get upset passengers to "go away" without giving them something useful like a voucher for dinner or a refund.

@rinse: In a perfect world (and likely in the case of independently owned stores) this would be the case. However, when you work for a huge chain where most employees aren't trained properly and the managers would rather hide in their office than actually DEAL WITH CUSTOMERS, there just isn't enough interest.

I personally think that managers should be tracking this kind of thing, because I don't understand how they can get credit for returned merchandise without a reason. However, on more than one occasion, I've handed a returned item to a manager only to have them shrug and tell me to chuck it out - and then they walk to their office and cut employee hours. Hm.

That plastic was meant to be ground up and put into their baby formula (melamine). Nestle's baby formula was found to have a little less than 1ppm melamine, along with the other makers of baby formula.

Early October the FDA said there was no safe level of melamine that they could determine. Last Friday they said 1ppm was safe after testing the content of domestic makers. Of course there was no test of safety conducted. It is great our loving government is looking out for us!

How many calories in plastic?

@TecmoTech: Frozen foods might be faster (emphasis on might...ever have a really cheap/crappy microwave? It's awful) but it's really not all that cost-effective. You can buy a single Lean Cuisine for $3 or $4, or you can buy 4 days' worth of vegetables for the same amount.

And I agree with Oranges, it's far better to eat real food.

This is disturbing. I actually like some of those Lean Cuisine meals and sandwiches, and I buy them when they're on sale and/or with coupons. Memo to self: Chew LC meals *very* slowly next time.

I can tell you for a fact that the factory that manufactures Nestle products is probably cleaner than your kitchen at home. I've been to factories like this and you would be impressed. Optical sensors are used for quality control and everything is X-rayed just in case a screw came loose and ended up in food.

Other manufacturers have good standards too. I'd say this is pure random "bad luck" that will affect ANY food manufacturer from time to unfortunate time.

On a side note, Nestle happens to be one of the very, very few makers of Pet Food (Purina brands) who did NOT have the melamine tainted grains (to boost the protein testing) from China. Their standards safeguard your pets. I presume even higher standards are applied to foods designed for human consumption.

I had a similar thing happen to me: I almost swallowed a shard of plastic that was in a Mattessons sandwich - apparently it came off one of the buckets they use to store ingredients. And they thought sending me coupons for more of their products was a good idea. I wrote back to them and suggested that they should consider a better form of compensation, since I didn't really want to buy any more of their food, and they sent me £25 :)