Yeah yeah, we know: Penicillin is mold*. But healthy or no, nobody wants to take a slug of a liquid beverage and find a globular bunch of moldy stuff trying to get down your throat. Grody to the max, right? Reports of contaminated vitaminwater are hitting the news, as one enterprising consumer even sent his blobular grossness off to a lab to be tested. The result? Mold. Not a vitamin. Nope.

CBS8 in San Diego has heard from multiple people who’ve encountered a gooey substance floating around in their vitaminwater, and it doesn’t sound like an experience we’d like to replicate.

“There was this blob of stuff in my mouth and it was all over my mouth and my tongue and I had to peel it off,” said one L.A. resident. “I panicked and I looked at the bottle and there was this blob floating around in it.” She poured it down the drain. “It was like a clear solid mass and it just slid down the drain as one solid piece. It was disgusting.”

“It’s like something I’ve never seen before and the taste of it was just terrible. And it made me sick,” another told the news station.

Four people total have complained, including one man who said he was hospitalized after drinking a vitaminwater last year. He sent his drink to be tested at a lab, which discovered some yucky stuff.

“We actually found common bacteria and mold that’s found in soil and water in the environment,” said a lab operations technician.

Parent company Coca-Cola issued a statement on the moldy findings, saying this kind of thing is totally normal:

“At Vitamin Water, we are committed to offering trusted brands and high quality, great-tasting beverages. Vitamin Water does not contain preservatives and, like other preservative-free natural products (such as cheese, jelly, and iced-tea products), contact with outside air over a period of time may cause formation of an innocuous type of mold commonly found in the environment. For Vitamin Water, exposure to outside air can occur in those rare instances when the bottle is damaged in transit or the seal is otherwise compromised. We are happy to work with the consumers who have contacted the station to address their concerns, but we cannot speculate on their situations without further investigation.”

In the meantime, if you encounter any blobbiness, take pictures and keep samples in case you need to contact Coca-Cola. And just watch what it is you’re drinking.

*It’s not a mold. It’s an antibiotic derived from a fungus but then people will be like “Oh hey, penicillin is mold, did you know that?” Those people are wrong.

Consumer Alert: Lab tests show gooey mold in ‘Vitamin Water’ [CBS 8 San Diego]

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