There have been six complaints of people choking or gagging after consuming Kraft … [+]
Oh cheese. You may want to check the film if you are eating a slice of Kraft Singles American processed cheese. The plastic film, that is. Normally, when you remove the wrapper from an individually-wrapped slice of such cheese, all that should remain is cheese. But a problem with one of Kraft Heinz’s wrapping machines has meant that for certain lots of these products a thin strip of plastic film could remain stuck on the cheese even after the wrapper is removed. Since this film would be transparent, you may not even notice it and end up accidentally swallowing the plastic. And life swallowing plastic is not fantastic. There have already been six customer complaints of people choking or gagging as a result. Fortunately, none of them ended up having serious health problems.
That’s why Kraft Heinz is now voluntarily recalling the approximately 83,800 cases of individually-wrapped Kraft Singles American processed cheese slices that may have been affected by this wrapping machine problem, according to an announcement posted by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The recall encompasses two sets of cheesy products. One set is 16-ounce Kraft Singles American Pasteurized Prepared Cheese Products that have universal product codes (UPC) of 0 2100061526 1, “Best When Used By” dates that range from January 10, 2024 through January 27, 2024, and Manufacturing Codes that include an S and 72. The other set is three pound multipacks of Kraft Singles American Pasteurized Prepared Cheese Product that have a UPC of 0 2100060491 3 and “Best When Used By” dates that range from January 9. 2024, through January 16, 2024.
So, if you do have some cheese that’s affected by the recall, the “Best When Used By” dates should effectively be “Never.” Don’t consume such products. Instead, return them to where you purchased them for an exchange or a refund.
With more and more food products having plastic wrappers, you may have wondered what accidentally swallowing some of this stuff may do to you. This is a situation where size does matter. If the wrapper is relatively small, in most cases, such material will simply pass through your gastrointestinal tract in a day or two in poo. The larger the piece of plastic wrapper, though, the more likely it could possibly get hung up somewhere along the way such as in your throat and cause some type of obstruction. That’s why you shouldn’t knowingly chance accidentally eating a piece of plastic wrapper.
Now if you for some reason want to make eating plastic wrappers a habit—something you really shouldn’t do—there’s another thing to be worried about. Plastic wrappers consist of a range of different chemicals. Many of these are chemicals that you really don’t want in your body. While passing through you gastrointestinal tract such chemicals could leech out of the plastic and in turn get absorbed into your bloodstream. Over time, the effects of such chemicals could add up to some negative health outcomes such as cancer. It’s not clear how many plastic wrappers you would have to eat for such outcomes to happen because there haven’t been enough studies to provide such info. And it wouldn’t be a good idea to run a clinical trial where you feed people such wrappers each day.
Kraft Heinz has indicated that they’ve fixed the faulty machine and inspected other machines as well. So, it looks they’ve wrapped up this problem with the plastic wrapper. However, it is a good idea to still remain vigilant whenever eating such cheese. You may want to make sure that your slice of scuh cheese of completely free of such wrapping material before consuming it—every single time.