A Scots nurse was left sickened after discovering a mealworm crawling on her Hello Fresh meal kit.
Laura Stephen, 45, was horrified to find the creature on the fresh chicken breast while she was preparing a meal last week. The popular meal-kit service, which delivers food and recipes to homes around the world, dropped off three meals at the mum's Falkirk home on Tuesday, July 5.
After enjoying the first two meals from her delivery, mum-of-three Laura began to prepare a Crispy Chicken with Chilli and Chive Sauce dish when she spotted the creepy-crawly on Thursday night. Speaking to the Record, the learning disability nurse said: "It was absolutely disgusting. I was physically feeling really sick.
"I get my Hello Fresh meals delivered on a Tuesday and I had ordered from them for four weeks in a row previously. When the meals got delivered they were all boxed up and I brought the delivery straight inside.
"When I was making my meals, I took the chicken out of the fridge in a sealed bag.
"Hello Fresh provide you with meal instructions so I was following the recipe card.
"I was coating the chicken breast in oil and when I flipped it round the creature was poking out of the fold in the meat.
"I thought it was a vein at first, then after I moved it I saw it was a maggot or a mealworm. It just completely put me off.
"I had unfortunately already eaten the other two meals from the box. I was totally sickened.
"I couldn't even go back to look to see if it was alive or if there was any more of them. I didn't hang about to check."
After binning the chicken, Laura immediately contacted Hello Fresh through their Twitter page.
She received an email from the company to say they take complaints of this nature "very seriously", however she was informed an investigation may take "up to a month" to be concluded.
Hello Fresh informed Laura that it would be too late to cancel her next order, but said she would be refunded for the full amount including £2.90 to cover the price of the chicken.
The mum-of-three believes her complaint has not be dealt with seriously.
Laura said: "When they first contacted me they offered me a £2.90 refund for the chicken and £10 credit on my account. I got back to them and said that was a complete insult. I was actually vomiting.
"Then about 24 hours later they sent another email to say it would take about a month for them to conduct their investigation.
"I would have liked if someone could have given me a call about it but they said everything had to be dealt with over email.
"I was horrified by what I had seen in my food. Their response just made me really annoyed.
"I cancelled my next order as there's no way I could ever eat anything from them ever again."
A spokesperson from HelloFresh said: "We are aware of the complaint and apologised directly to the customer, who received a gesture of goodwill and has been offered a full refund for the box. As requested by the customer, we have also closed her account.
"The safety of our ingredients is our number one priority, and as soon as we learned of this incident, our customer service team acted swiftly and urgently raised this issue with our Food Safety Quality Assurance team and the supplier, we also informed the relevant authority. Given the thorough nature of the investigation with the supplier this will take some time to complete."
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