That's no way to "respect the pouch"!

Hey moms, do you send Capri Sun juice packs in your kids’ lunches? Well, you might be serving them up a nice healthy dose of worms alongside that sandwich!

A 9-year-old in North Carolina was drinking a Capri Sun when he sucked something up in the straw and started to choke on a slimy substance. He spit it out and discovered it was worm. His horrified mother alerted the company who asked that she send the contaminated pouches and worm back to them so they could hide the evidence do their own tests, but the mother had already sent it to a lab to get her own results.

OK, so as gross as this initially sounds, an isolated incident is one thing, and who really knows the integrity of any one random person. Sure, people will go to great lengths to gain financial rewards. I wanted to find different viewpoints of this one story before I wrote this piece so I began to Google ‘capri sun w” and guess what? The rest of the word “worms” auto-filled in the search box which tells you that one search term is quite a popular one. Then I quickly discovered there are several instances of worms being found in Capri Sun packs. There are even YouTube videos of people finding worms in their Capri Suns. Here is another.

The most recent story is a boy from North Carolina but there was also a similar report in Texas. CNN reports of yet another in which a 21-year-old nursing student, Sara Ramirez also found a worm in a pouch and posted her correspondence between her and the company. Here is some of what Kim McMiller Associate Director of Consumer Relations for Kraft wrote back to Sara:

I want to assure you that our quality control program is designed to maintain a high level of sanitation, which includes thorough cleaning and special treatment of both the production and storage areas to deter the presence of insect, bugs and pests. We test all of our ingredients and inspect all packaging supplies before we use them. In addition, we keep samples of our products and examine them continuously until they have reached their expiration date. Despite these steps, we do lose a certain amount of control over our products once they’re shipped. If our products are stored close to other food products which are already infested or beyond their shelf lives, it’s possible for insects to travel from one product to another by penetrating packaging materials.

Each of the people involved say the packages were completely sealed, no leaks were present and the boxes were new, not expired. Of course, something could go wrong at a dirty supermarket or factory once the juice packs leave the processing plant but how on earth would the insects get inside once the juice packs are already sealed up? Also, this seems to be commonly known among a lot of people. I mean even Google recognizes the connection between the words “Capri Sun” and “worm”. For now, Capri Sun is maintaining that the substance was mold, not a worm (despite the photos and videos from irate customers, some of which have been sent to labs.)

It’s too coincidental (not to mention gross) on any level for me to even consider buying them again. Just last week, I was perusing my local supermarket ads and asked my son if he still liked Capri Sun because they were going on sale soon. He said no because the flavor, he said, changed and he didn’t like them anymore.

Gulp.

Think I may have just realized the reason behind the change in flavor.

Image: Wikipedia

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