Don’t Buy Fruit, Vegetables, and Raw Meat From Trader Joe’s!

by max on Saturday, February 6th, 2010

One of my favorite places to shop for groceries is Trader Joe’s. There’s 2 of them within 5 minutes from my apartment here in San Francisco.

Most of the stuff at Trader Joe’s is pretty good except I had couple horrifying experiences in the last 3 months or so.

Tonight, I bought one of their “cooked” meat, which you can warm up in your oven or microwave. Without much thought, I cut up the pouch it was in so I could cook it in my oven. Well, it wasn’t “cooked” at all! Worst of all, the meat smelled like someone just puked! It was this disgusting, putrid smell.

I thought that could just be the seasoning and went ahead and cooked it in my oven. Oh my god, that was the worst ever, it stunk up my whole apartment like someone just puked everywhere.

I even took a bite of the steak, it tasted like some kind of rubber. Of course, that’s when I realized this meat must be bad and good thing I didn’t swallow the meat, it probably was full of worms.

If this was the first time such a thing happen to me, I wouldn’t be writing this blog post now. As a consumer who expects a certain degree of freshness from Trader Joe’s (and especially they are supposed to be about healthier foods than your regular grocers), this was the last time I was ever going to buy anything near raw from Trader Joe’s.

Don’t get me wrong, Trader Joe has a ton of great stuff that don’t go bad over time such as cheap wine and frozen salmon, both which I love. Something has gone downhill at Trader Joe’s as far as freshness, I’ve been noticing that they put a lot of “old” fruits and vegetables.

This isn’t the first time it has happened, let me tell you what happened 2 months ago. I bought some blackberries from Trader Joe’s. I was about to swallow one of them when I got back home but at the last second I noticed something very white around it. Upon careful inspection, it was MOLD! I kinda let it go because I am not one of those people who will go back to the store to get my refund. If it’s bad, it’s going in the garbage.

Of course, these two incidents could have been one in a million but I am pretty sure it has been happening to a lot of you. Never in my life did I buy two really bad fruit/meat from the same store.

The store that happened to me is the San Francisco Stonestown location. Every time I go since then, I’ve been trying to check the expiration date of everything I buy. I’ve also noticed that the Trader Joe employees “hide” the most fresh fruits in the back. And I’ve noticed a lot of fruits and vegetables are at least 2-3 days old.

For some fruits like apples and oranges, 2-3 days probably won’t matter but things like strawberries or any kind of berries, I think it can make a huge difference.

Who cares about money at this point, this is about my health and my life for godsakes!

So I am warning you to NOT BUY fruits/vegetables or any kind of raw meat from Trader Joe’s until they can start doing something about it.

Think about it, if I had poisoning from eating those things and I had to go to the emergency room, that’s a lot more money down the drain plus I would probably living on Vicodin for couple days.

No thanks. Perhaps it’s just my SF Stonestown location that’s bad but seriously, Trader Joe needs to do something about it.

Also take a look at some of these Yelp review that reports rotten fruit over in Washington D.C.:

What is up with the rotting fruit at Trader Joe’s? It seems like most of the fruit is rotting within a day of purchase, and sometimes it is even rotting in the store. On top of that you pay extra, since it is organic. Organic does not mean it should be rotting quickly, in fact Whole Foods’ organic fruit keeps quite long. People have been telling me that Trader Joe’s is good for Wine and Flowers, how about some freakin groceries, that’s what I need.

Obviously this is happening nationwide, perhaps Trader Joe’s management team decided they would make more money by keeping fruits, vegetables, and meat 1-2 days longer than they should.

Seriously, I am not asking much here, STOP SELLING ROTTEN FOOD! And FDA should really look into this if Trader Joe doesn’t do anything about it.

Next time you get food poisoning and you ate food you bought from Trader Joe’s,uh oh…

Btw, I will still go to Trader Joe’s because they have mini-carts for toddlers and toddler play area. I just won’t be buying any fruits, vegetables, or raw meat.

Oh yeah, I won’t be returning my meat because it STINKS! You can however send me $12 that I spent on the expensive, “cooked” meat if you’d like. (Oh yeah, don’t forget $4 I paid for rotten berries couple months back too.)

Well, it’s not money that’s important here but still, I spent money and it went all into my stinkin’ trash can. The worst part is that if I did get sick from eating those rotten stuff, I probably wouldn’t have known it came from Trader Joe’s. Thank GOD!

Am I whining here? You betcha I am. If someone doesn’t stop complaining about things, the world will never change. Subscribe to my blog so you can listen to all my “personal” experiences with consumer products and other business/blogging stuff I talk about. It’s mostly positive and some posts like this when it hits me hard.

I am just really stinkin’ tired of companies gone bad such as Trader Joe’s. As a consumer, this isn’t acceptable. However, if they DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT, like YESTERDAY, I will be happy to write about that too.