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Missing allergy warning
Apr. 17th, 2011 08:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
steorra(Cross-posted from allergies and, with some variations, from my own journal, by the encouragement of literally.)
I have a potentially-fatal allergy to peanuts and walnuts.
I just went shopping. As I sometimes do, I looked through the section of fancy chocolate bars, trying to find something that didn't have traces of peanuts or walnuts. I ended up finding two that were labelled as safe for me and looked like things I might enjoy, and bought them both.
One of them was dark chocolate with mint. I checked the packaging carefully before buying it. The list of ingredients didn't include nuts, and there was no 'may contain traces' type warning that I could spot anywhere else around the back of the package. I probably checked several times; I usually do with chocolate, because it seems too good to be true when I find some I can actually have.
After I got home and unloaded all the groceries, I figured I'd have a bit of one of my new chocolate bars. I had decided on this mint one. I checked the back again, because it still seemed too good to be true. The back of the package has lists of ingredients in quite a few languages; English at the top, followed by Spanish, French, Greek, something Slavic in Latin letters, Swedish, and something that might be Portuguese, though it didn't contain any of the really obvious indicators of Portuguese.
One of these caught my eye, and I noticed that it had a 'may contain traces' warning. In fact, all the languages besides English do, warning against possible traces of milk and something else. I suspected the 'something else' might be nuts, but I wasn't sure. The French and Spanish were respectively 'fruits secs' and 'frutos secos', which literally means 'dry fruits', but I seemed to recall that that might mean nuts. I checked the German, which said 'trockenfruchten' (dry fruits), but given the lack of capitalization in the German, I figured it was likely a poor translation. The chocolate was produced by a Spanish company, so I figured I'd take the Spanish version as probably authoritative. I plugged 'frutos secos' into Google Translate, and sure enough, it came out as 'nuts'.
GRR!
That is a labelling failure that clearly someone ought to be made aware of. There should probably be a product recall. And I should probably attempt to inform the relevant people. I'd really rather not bother, but it should be done, so I guess I will try to do something about it...
The chocolate in question is "Dark Chocolate 70% Cocoa With Mint", produced by Valor Chocolates.
allergies and, with some variations, from my own journal, by the encouragement of literally.)I have a potentially-fatal allergy to peanuts and walnuts.
I just went shopping. As I sometimes do, I looked through the section of fancy chocolate bars, trying to find something that didn't have traces of peanuts or walnuts. I ended up finding two that were labelled as safe for me and looked like things I might enjoy, and bought them both.
One of them was dark chocolate with mint. I checked the packaging carefully before buying it. The list of ingredients didn't include nuts, and there was no 'may contain traces' type warning that I could spot anywhere else around the back of the package. I probably checked several times; I usually do with chocolate, because it seems too good to be true when I find some I can actually have.
After I got home and unloaded all the groceries, I figured I'd have a bit of one of my new chocolate bars. I had decided on this mint one. I checked the back again, because it still seemed too good to be true. The back of the package has lists of ingredients in quite a few languages; English at the top, followed by Spanish, French, Greek, something Slavic in Latin letters, Swedish, and something that might be Portuguese, though it didn't contain any of the really obvious indicators of Portuguese.
One of these caught my eye, and I noticed that it had a 'may contain traces' warning. In fact, all the languages besides English do, warning against possible traces of milk and something else. I suspected the 'something else' might be nuts, but I wasn't sure. The French and Spanish were respectively 'fruits secs' and 'frutos secos', which literally means 'dry fruits', but I seemed to recall that that might mean nuts. I checked the German, which said 'trockenfruchten' (dry fruits), but given the lack of capitalization in the German, I figured it was likely a poor translation. The chocolate was produced by a Spanish company, so I figured I'd take the Spanish version as probably authoritative. I plugged 'frutos secos' into Google Translate, and sure enough, it came out as 'nuts'.
GRR!
That is a labelling failure that clearly someone ought to be made aware of. There should probably be a product recall. And I should probably attempt to inform the relevant people. I'd really rather not bother, but it should be done, so I guess I will try to do something about it...
The chocolate in question is "Dark Chocolate 70% Cocoa With Mint", produced by Valor Chocolates.
