GROSS

On Saturday we went out to Ruby Tuesday for dinner. On the way back, we stopped for gas and I ran inside the minimart or whatever it's called to grab a snack. I purchased a Pinapple Fanta, Tropical Skittles, and Rolos. I love Rolos, they're like the perfect blend of caramel and milk chocolate. Well not any more! I opened the paper and carefully opened the gold foil wrapper so that it wouldn't rip. I noticed the chocolate was flaky on the first piece, but I figured it was because of a temperature change or shipping. NOPE. I pulled the first piece away from the second and THERE WAS A LIVE WHITE WORM STARING AND WIGGLING AT ME from my once delicious chocolate candy!!!!!! EWWWWWWWWWWWW! We hadn't pulled off yet, so I ran back inside and the also disgusted cashier gave me my money back and threw away the candy. I regret doing that now because I could've taken a picture. I was thoroughly disgusted for the rest of the evening. I still am.

So being an avid Consumerist reader, I thought the best thing to do was send off an email to Hershey's informing them of their horrible product mishap. I decided to do a little research first though. Apparently, having worms in various chocolate candies is pretty common. In the course of my research, I stumbled upon an FDA report that basically sums up how many bugs, how much of their poop and other crap that shouldn't be in our food is actually in our food. I found out that in chocolate, there is an average of 60 insect fragments per 100 grams of chocolate. A package of Rolos is 48g and there are 8 Rolos in each package. If I'm interpreting the data correctly, that means that there could've been about 10 insect fragments in every bite! YUCK! And this is perfectly legal and "safe". Not for my mental health; I'm not too comfortable with the thought of eating bugs. I've read that the problem stems from the cocoa beans, but I don't understand how the larvae could survive the cooking process and make it out alive in my chocolate, unless it came in somewhere between the factory and the store to my hands. I remember one of the local news stations did a report on worms and larvae in Mars M-Azing candy bars, and they found out that the problem was not limited to only a few incidents. Heat and improper storage had something to do with it, but that wasn't the only problem. I've read that the worms aren't harmful if digested, but still, who wants to something that something else already ate with the something else still inside?!

I still haven't written to Hershey, but I probably will later today. They'll probably send some coupons for more wormy chocolate and apologize for my dissatisfaction, but I wish that memory could be erased. I probably won't be eating chocolate for a while. That was a horrible experience.