Those aren’t grape nuts

As a teenager I worked in a bulk food store. The job was great. I hung out with a close friend who worked there too and my responsibilities consisted of taking large bags or boxes of food, opening them up, and putting them into bins.grape+nuts3

I also got to eat a lot of wine gums and M&M’s.

Customers would come in, grab an empty bag and scoop out what they needed. Cost was based on weight. One of the popular bins (sort of surprisingly), which required at least a weekly refill, was Grape Nuts, the Post-made cereal. The flaw of the system where I worked was that the bins had tiny labels and a few times a week someone looking for Grape Nuts would fill a bag up with textured vegetable protein.

Dried cat vomit also apparently looks like Grape Nuts to Hartford CBS affiliate reporter Scot Haney. During newscast banter Haney, (below, exactly as shown) picks up what he believed was a Grape Nut from the floor and reveals later that he accidentally had eaten dried cat vomit that he had brought in on his shoe.

Yum.

This entry was posted in Food Safety Culture, Wacky and Weird and tagged , , by Ben Chapman. Bookmark the permalink.

About Ben Chapman

Dr. Ben Chapman is a professor and food safety extension specialist at North Carolina State University. As a teenager, a Saturday afternoon viewing of the classic cable movie, Outbreak, sparked his interest in pathogens and public health. With the goal of less foodborne illness, his group designs, implements, and evaluates food safety strategies, messages, and media from farm-to-fork. Through reality-based research, Chapman investigates behaviors and creates interventions aimed at amateur and professional food handlers, managers, and organizational decision-makers; the gate keepers of safe food. Ben co-hosts a biweekly podcast called Food Safety Talk and tries to further engage folks online through Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and, maybe not surprisingly, Pinterest. Follow on Twitter @benjaminchapman.