One woman is calling out Cadbury on TikTok after finding something unsavory inside the confectionery brand’s chocolate bar.
User Claudia (@cclaudiasprivate) films her father inspecting the package as Claudia zooms in on the chocolate. She picks up a square and turns it over, which reveals a metal staple stuck in the bottom.
The one with the staple in the Cadbury chocolate
“POV the lawsuit is getting serious now as dad has found a staple in our Cadbury chocolate,” she wrote in the text overlay, tagging Cadbury’s Australian division in the caption.
Several commenters had a punny response.
“A staple ingredient some may say,” one user wrote.
“Chocolate has always been a staple food,” another joked.
A third user poked fun at Claudia’s dad. “He’s checking the ingredients to see if it’s supposed to have staples in it,” they said.
And no, Cadbury chocolate is not supposed to have staples in it.
Is it harmful to eat a staple?
It should go without saying, but a metal staple inside a piece of chocolate could be harmful. The metal piece could cut into the eater’s mouth or become embedded within their gastrointestinal tract, according to several medical experts on Quora.
However, those experts also note that the damage would be fairly minimal. It’s likely the staple would pass straight through the digestive tract without a hitch.
“However, having worked in an ED for some time, it has become apparent that the human body is perfectly capable of passing much larger, much sharper objects than a staple,” wrote Lou Davis, a veteran employee in emergency medicine.
Still, the Food and Drug Administration warns of the harms of sharp objects found in food.
“Hard or sharp foreign objects in food may cause traumatic injury including laceration and perforation of tissues of the mouth, tongue, throat, stomach and intestine as well as damage to the teeth and gums,” the agency stated.
Could Claudia sue Cadbury?
It’s possible to sue a company over a foreign object in food. However, one can usually only make a claim citing personal injury, per Legal Match. This could include damage to the mouth, throat, and teeth, as well as digestive illnesses.
So, unless Claudia or her father faced damage at the hands of the Cadbury staple, they likely couldn’t sue the company.
However, brands are often happy to do a bit of gifting to counteract the bad PR of a foreign object found in their product. Several commenters noted their experiences with brands.
“I found a part of a spoon in my Peter’s icecream. They sent us a full huge freezer full of icecream, months later I realised part of my own spoon actually broke in the icecream hahah,” one user wrote.
“I bought an Arizona green tea and it fizzed up like a soda when I opened it. I told Arizona and they sent me coupons, a bucket hat, and some lanyards,” another said.
Others’ experiences weren’t so grand.
“My mom found maggots/larvae in her Cadbury fruit and nuts bar, tried contacting the company about it and they wouldn’t even awknowledge it,” one claimed.
‘I found metal in my subway bun and tried to tell corporate and they said they didnt care,” a second wrote.
And one user simply cited an episode of Friends. “I once found a thumb in a can of soda. When I complained they sent me £10,000 and a football phone,” they said, referring to Phoebe’s plot in “The One with the Thumb.”
Should you be worried about your chocolate?
Cadbury has not appeared to have a large-scale issue with sharp foreign objects found in its chocolates.
However, other brands have been at fault.
Tony’s Chocolonely had to issue a nationwide recall of two flavors of its chocolate bars earlier this month, per the Daily Mail. The chocolate bar was found to have small stones in bars sold at Whole Foods, Target, Safeway, and CVS, which would pose a choking hazard.
A Tony’s representative told the Daily Mail the stones found their way into the chocolate via its third-party almond sourcing.
@cclaudiasprivate @CadburyAU #dobetter #fyp #foryoupage #chocolate #viral #famous ♬ Funny – Gold-Tiger
Still, it’s unclear how the staple ended up inside Claudia’s Cadbury chocolate bar. The Daily Dot has reached out to Cadbury via email, as well as to Claudia via TikTok comment.
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