Brad says a breakfast-befouling chemical odor emits from his Eggo waffles when he opens the package. When he brought up the issue to Kellogg, he says the company tried to satisfy him with some coupons, which he used to buy more waffles, only to experience the same problem. He sent a package to Kellogg and is waiting to hear back, and has also gone to the Food And Drug Administration.

He writes:

I wanted to pass along a concern I’ve had about an unpleasant chemical odor in the packaging of Eggo Nutri-Grain waffles in the last few months, given the recall of Kellogg’s cereal boxes in June. Every package I have bought with use-by codes August 11 or later have had this unpleasant chemical odor when I opened the box. (The odor is not apparent on the outside of the box – just once you open it.) The waffles themselves (inside the bag inside the box) tasted ok. But I found the odor irritating enough that I would not store the waffles in the bag or box once opened, out of concern for it transferring to the waffles or other food in my freezer.

I reported this to Kellogg’s several times. The first time they sent me coupons to replace the two packages in question. I purchased replacement packages from different stores to make sure the odor wasn’t acquired at a store’s warehouse, but found the same smell in boxes from every store in town, except for some with older date codes, whose packaging was odorless. When I got no response from Kellogg’s when I reported the additional packages/date codes with odor, I contacted the FDA, out of concern that whatever is causing the odor may be unhealthy.

The FDA representatives interviewed me, smelled the packaging, and agreed about the irritating nature of the chemical odor. They collected samples to submit to their lab. But they said to find out anything about the results of the investigation I would need to make a filing under the freedom of information act.

I then reported the situation to Kellogg’s a third time, including mention that I had contacted the FDA.

This time Kellogg’s had me send them some of the packaging I still had on hand. (This was about a month ago.) I have not heard anything else from them since then.

I have since tried a box of the regular (non-Nutri-Grain) blueberry waffles, and found the same odor in that packaging. I’ve now given up purchasing Eggos unless/until I hear they have addressed the issue/changed the packaging to eliminate the irritating odor.

If you’ve had a similar experience with your frozen waffles, let us know.

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