by Cheyenne Schoen |
Kimberly Mueller was given a little more protein than she had asked for in her salad ordered from The Commons Thursday.
Mueller, a sophomore biology major, was picking out the mushrooms from her salad with her fingers when she noticed one that felt particularly squishy. It was a slug.
“That’s when I saw it move,” Mueller said. “I didn’t eat the rest of the salad, and I didn’t say anything to Bon App about it. It was really nasty.”
Mueller said she thinks Bon Appétit could do a better job of inspecting the produce before serving it.
“I understand that organic means they aren’t killing all the bugs, so the bugs are going to be there,” Mueller said. “I will just be very cautious every time I eat a salad.”
Bon Appétit general manager Kirk Mustain said that finding an insect in the food is rare, but it is a risk that comes with serving organic produce.
Much of Bon Appétit’s produce is grown by farms that are within 150 miles of The Commons, and all produce served at the salad bar is certified organic.
“It’s organic produce, and that’s what happens when you don’t use pesticides,” Mustain said. “It’s unfortunate, but it’s bound to happen in organic produce sometimes.”
Bon Appétit has a strict washing procedure with produce after it comes in from the farms. All produce gets processed in a triple-wash sink before going out to be served.
Mustain said that it is likely the slug found its way onto the underside of a whole leaf of lettuce that came in from one of Bon Appétit’s partner farms. He said that it is unlikely the slug was in the bagged chopped salads, because those are all pre-washed.
“It happens, not very often, but it’s one bug,” Mustain said. “It’s not like there was a staple or a Band-Aid in it. Getting a bug in there is bound to happen.”
Nicki Gaumont, a junior psychology major, had a similar experience last fall when she found a whole wasp in a tomato in a pre-wrapped sandwich from The Commons.
“I was really grossed out, and I thought I was going to throw up,” Gaumont said. “At first I was mad, but then I thought it was understandable that sometimes there are bugs in food, so I guess I wasn’t too torn-up about it. It was just gross because I wouldn’t want to bite into a wasp.”
Junior mechanical engineering major Patrick Doherty also had an encounter with a creepy crawly in his Commons food when he found an earthworm in his organic salad last fall.
“I made sure to let the Bon App supervisor know, but he just said that it was a consequence of having fresh, organic food or something like that,” Doherty said. “They let me have a new salad, but I didn’t really want one after that.” Cheyenne Schoen is a reporter at The Beacon. She can be reached at schoen17@up.edu.
