Archive for December 17th, 2009

Slim Fast Recall

It seems that a bacterium was dicovered in all Slim Fast drinks (it was not clear whether there were also other products besides their well known diet shakes) that has caused a recall of all products on the shelves, which is estimated at about ten million products.  The company, Unilever, recalled everything about one week ago after the company voluntarily recalled all products. They had discovered the contaminant during routine examinations, and wanted to get it off the shelves before it harmed anyone seriously.

They did, however, think that the possibility of serious illness was fairly unlikely. An udetermined amount of people reported feeling nauseous and throwing up several hours after consuming the drink, which is often a sign that one has gotten food poisoning by some pathogen if there are no other known health issues at play.  

The company who makes Slim Fast products, Unliver, which is a manufacturer of several other health food products as well as toiletries like soaps and the like, says that they believe the bacterial contamination happened somewhere in the manufacturing process. I often wonder in situations like these, do they have to bust butt and really churn these products out after they essentially wipe them all off the shelves? 

What are the set of protocol for these types of issues?  At any rate, if you have any cans of Slim Fast shakes, you probably want to pitch them, especially if you have purchased them in the past few weeks, as they may almost certainly be a part of the recalled products and could be contaminated with the pathogen that has caused these minor (yet definitely still a nuisance) illnesses. 

I tried Slim Fast years ago, I”m not sure if they’ve improved the formula at all, but what I do remember is that they did not fill me up as promised, and on top of that they gave me gas from drinking them. I always felt like I still needed some sort of substance other than liquid when I drank them. I wasn’t sure how it was possible for these shakes to really satisfy you in any real way. However that being said, I do have some friends who like these and think they fill them up, so maybe I’m just a big ol’ piggie!