Did he really find shrimp tails in Cinnamon Toast Crunch?
When a story began circulating this week about a disturbing discovery in a box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch, consumers were horrified.
None more so than Jensen Karp.
On Monday morning, he ate a bowl of his favorite cereal. As he began filling a second bowl, “something plopped out of the box,” he said in an interview. “I picked it up, and I was, like, ‘ This is clearly a shrimp tail.’”
He looked in the bag and saw what appeared to be another tail. Both were encrusted with sugar. “I get really grossed out, and I’m medicated for OCD, so this is a total nightmare for me,” he said.
Karp, a 41-year-old comedian and writer in Los Angeles, took a picture of the contents and sent it to his wife, Danielle Fishel Karp, the actress who played Topanga LawrenceMatthews on “Boy Meets World.”
Then he sent a form submission email to General Mills documenting what he’d found. Soon after, he posted a picture of the items on Twitter. Eventually, Cinnamon Toast Crunch reached out to Karp through its Twitter account.
“Privately, they were still being very nice,” he said, offering to send a replacement box, which he politely declined. Then the
brand issued a public statement on Twitter.
“After further investigation with our team that closely examined the image, it appears to be an accumulation of the cinnamon sugar that sometimes can occur when ingredients aren’t thoroughly blended,” the statement from Cinnamon Toast Crunch read. “We assure you that there’s no possibility of cross contamination with shrimp.”
That didn’t sit well with Karp, and he responded with frustration.
When his tweet started getting attention, a friend called and suggested that he re-examine the bag of cereal. “I had never even thought about going back into the bag,” he said. “Never even crossed my mind.”
After looking again, he now wishes he hadn’t. In addition to a few objects that Karp described as “shrimp skins-looking things,” “a small string” and something that looked like a pistachio — all encrusted in sugar — he noticed a “small black piece” on some of the squares and at the bottom of the bag.
These, he feared, could be rat feces. “That’s what I’m trying to get tested right now, because that’s the only thing that really matters to me as far as if I can get sick,” he said. On Monday night, he called the California Poison Control System, which suggested that he take a sample to a lab.
So he drove to Quest Diagnostics, which was not able to test the sample but suggested a different lab. He reached out and is waiting to hear back. So far, he said, he has “zero” symptoms. “I am most likely not sick,” he wrote in a text message. “But I am not against checking what I ate.”
He had bought a “two pack” of Cinnamon Toast Crunch, a large box containing two bags. On the other bag of cereal, he noticed what appeared to be clear tape along the bottom, leading him to believe the boxes might have been tampered with.
“While we are still investigating this matter, we can say with confidence that this did not occur at our facility,” Mike Siemienas, a representative for General Mills, wrote in an email. “We are waiting for the consumer to send us the package to investigate further. Any consumers who notice their cereal box or bag has been tampered with, such as the clear tape that was found in this case, should contact us.”