Toward the end of May this year, Kate began giving her six-month-old daughter solids for the first time. Among them, a Heinz Farex Breakfast on the Go pouches that she’d purchased from their local supermarket.
The Sydney mum squeezed the ‘Apple and Oatmeal’ into a bowl ready to warm for her little one, but out with the oats came “thick black leaves” of what appeared to be slimy mould.
Kate* says she’d stored the product correctly, and that it was well within its expiry date.
“I just thought, ‘Oh my God! That’s disgusting,” Kate told Mamamia. “When I phoned [Heinz consumer service] to complain, they said occasionally food rots that way, with the black lumps, when air gets through little holes in the packaging. They knew what I was talking about.
“They said, ‘We always recommend that you never squeeze the product directly into their mouth.’”
The product’s packaging promotes the same message: “To serve cold, simply squeeze into a bowl or onto a spoon,” it reads.
“My baby’s still really little, so I would have done that anyway,” Kate said. “But I do have a 20-month-old and he definitely would have grabbed one of them and eaten the whole thing. You see toddlers everywhere, squeezing them into their mouths.”
