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A Runcorn woman got the “shock of her life” when she found “legs poking out” from a bag of frozen spinach. Claire Latham had already eaten half of the spinach in the bag the night before when she made the grizzly discovery on Tuesday (July 19).
Claire was “bashing up” the bag of spinach she bought from ASDA when she found a brown bug with two antennas and legs in the bag, which she threw back in horror. “Tea was ruined,” she said, adding that when cooking from now on she will “examine it all.”
Claire told the Liverpool ECHO: “I’d already used half the bag the night before and it makes me feel sick. I just saw this brown thing, it looked like a kidney bean so I scooped it up and when I saw it and realised I threw it back in the pan and rang my partner, tea was ruined.
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“Asda responded to my Tweet and I’m shocked by their reaction to be honest. They said they understand where I’m coming from and said they cannot guarantee the elimination of natural foreign bodies and that I’d be sent a £5 e-voucher. I was a bit disappointed. I didn’t want a voucher, I wanted it to be looked into.
“I said to them I don’t want to accept it, it’s not good enough. When my partner came home from work he had to go back out to do some shopping. They just offered £5 for quite a big creepy crawly in my food, it wasn’t a goodwill gesture.
“I couldn’t get rid of it, my partner had to. I’ve never had this happen to me before and i’s put me off buying frozen spinach. We had another bag from Tesco but I wouldn’t put it in the food, I squashed it in a Tupperware and made sure there was nothing there.
“I thought with it being frozen you wouldn’t find anything like that. It made me feel sick. You kind of expect with fresh stuff that you have to wash it all first, but you don’t with frozen.”
Claire said the frozen items are convenient for herself and her partner who both work 11 hour shifts, but now it has made her “iffy” about it. She added: “I will never forget this bug in my spinach. Make sure you defrost and check your food.
“Don’t just put things straight into your meals because that’s what a lot of people do. That’s what we do, we just chuck it in and I can’t do that now, I’ll have to defrost it and examine it all. Just be aware because these things can happen.”
Taking to social media, Claire wrote: “The horror I have just had, cooking tea. Always use frozen spinach as it’s easy to have it on hand. Through the spinach block in and a dead bug comes out one of the spinach blocks. @AsdaServiceTeam @asda Tea totally ruined now. Thanks Asda.”
A spokesperson for Asda said: “‘All of our fruit and veg gets cleaned thoroughly before being packaged, however as it is grown fresh outside there is always a small chance that insects can tag along for the ride. We have apologised to Ms. Latham and would like to remind our customers that if they spot something in a product that shouldn’t be there they should return it to their nearest store so that we can look into it.”
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