Pringles Recall

By James Sheldon on March 9th, 2010

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Once you pop, you … well, you may end up in the hospital with Salmonella.

Now I feel bad for picking on the automotive industry and their woes. It seems Toyota, Nissan and GM aren’t the only influences offering a little funk to the world-market.

Proctor & Gamble, yes the company owning brands that make everything from toothpaste to Christina Aguilera Perfume, received a recommendation from The Food & Drug Administration to recall several canisters of Pringles Potato Crisps, due to the germ Salmonella Tennessee. A couple of things instantly trigger that internal red-flag of suspicion: first, they’re seriously potatoes? (How do they get them to curve, just so?) And second, the FDA recommends a recall? Recommends? Really? I can see it now:

Dear Proctor & Gamble,

Your Pringles Potato Crisps could potentially cause violent vomiting, explosive diarrhea and even death. We recommend that the company issue a recall, as your chemically treated food has experienced an occurrence of something that is living and natural. You know, just in case someone might want to sue.

Signed-

The Food & Drug Administration

Yep. In my imagination, that’s how the FDA rolls. There may be a correlation as to why we’re allowed to ingest toxic soup on a daily basis–preserving our bodies like a piece of raw meat that doesn’t go bad after sitting at room temperature for a day or two. I’ll have to look into that.

The Pringles feeling the funk are of the following varieties: Pringles Restaurant Cravers Cheeseburger, Super Stack Canister, bearing the best by dates: 02/2011, 04/2011; and the Pringles Family Faves Taco Night, Super Stack Canister, bearing the best by dates: 03/2011, 04/2011, 05/2011.

The Salmonella culprit comes in form of the hydrolyzed vegetable protein (HVP), a flavor enhancer used in everything from chips to chili to hot dogs. (Crap. There goes my daily Weinerschnitzel run.) If you’re ever-so-slightly curious as to why only those flavors have been recalled, most of the other products using HVP experience a “kill step,” which launches an all out war against insurgent Salmonella.

(Image via: Pringles)