If you’ve been on the Slim Fast diet and drink one or two canned drinks a day you should probably stop or change to a different product. All canned Slim Fast drinks have voluntarily been recalled by the company because of reservations over bacterial contamination, which is associated with diarrhea, nausea, and vomiting. At present there are about 10 million products in the market.
The drinks might be contaminated with the microorganism Bacillus cereus. Until now the FDA hasn’t revealed any deaths or injuries connected to the recall but an unknown amount of people have gotten sick between six and fifteen hours after consumption. Although they recovered within 24 hours.
Contamination presumably happened during the manufacturing process. The pathogen was discovered and then the FDA was informed. The products are located nationwide and all Slim Fast drinks should be disposed of. They come in 11 ounce cans in packages of either four, six or 12 steel cans. But some cans are also sold individually.
All cans have been recalled. No matter what the flavor, expiration date, lot code or UPC number is just get rid of them. But if you’re worried about messing up the Slim Fast plan you don’t need to. All other products besides the drinks including the powdered shakes, meal bars or snack bars are okay.
The company is working on finding where the issue took place and what caused the contamination. Production has stopped until the problem is solved. All customers need to get rid of their drinks. If not they risk the chance of being ill for 24 hours with very disagreeable symptoms.
In the U.S. everyone relies immensely on the items produced in factories. But the fact is that there’s a very remote chance of getting sick from the food we buy, but we really don’t know what is occurring when our food is being processed. We just have to put our trust and faith in the system and the FDA and hope that we’ll come out alright.
The trouble is that in developed countries there are producers and consumers. In the olden days everyone raised their own food and would purchase the few supplies that they wanted. And now there are very few people that raise a garden to provide for their own needs. Most of us don’t have the time or space to grow one so we rely completely on others to supply our food and we just buy it at the grocery store.
So the fact that we have little to do with growing our own food makes us entirely reliant on farmers and manufacturers. Especially if we’re on a certain diet like Slim Fast because then you only eat one or two meals a day and the remaining meals end up being a shake.
Diets increase our reliability on products especially if only buy a certain brand. Loyalty to a brand takes a lot of money out of our pockets and puts it into theirs but it makes us distrust that when there’s a recall like this. But after this recall and the close inspections the plant is going through, these products will almost certainly be the safest because they’ve really inspected and fixed their plant in order to avoid future problems.
About the Author
Diane Johnson earned a bachelor’s degree in Political Science from the University of Utah. She is interested in distance learning and likes to write about the news, politics, college degrees, online schooling, and the college experience.
