10 ms·

Meal Kit company sued by customers whose gallbladders were removed

110 points by ilamont 4y ago

Barrera 4y ago
The story doesn't discuss what's causing this, but another story in Rolling Stone has a plausible lead: > “They [company] were kind of implicating the customer in not cooking them correctly, but I definitely did because I cook a lot of vegetarian stuff,” says Aarts, who is a vegetarian and allergic to gluten. She says she sautéed the lentils until they started to crisp and even blacken a bit because she knows they need to be cooked thoroughly. https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/daily-harvest-influencer-gallbladder-hospital-lentil-recall-1372422/ https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/daily-... It turns out lentils contain lectins, a class of molecules with some alarming chemical characteristics: > Lectins are carbohydrate binding (glyco)proteins which are ubiquitous in nature. In plants, they are distributed in various families and hence ingested daily in appreciable amounts by both humans and animals. One of the most nutritionally important features of plant lectins is their ability to survive digestion by the gastrointestinal tract of consumers. This allows the lectins to bind to membrane glycosyl groups of the cells lining the digestive tract. As a result of this interaction a series of harmful local and systemic reactions are triggered placing this class of molecules as antinutritive and/or toxic substances. Locally, they can affect the turnover and loss of gut epithelial cells, damage the luminal membranes of the epithelium, interfere with nutrient digestion and absorption, stimulate shifts in the bacterial flora and modulate the immune state of the digestive tract. Systemically, they can disrupt lipid, carbohydrate and protein metabolism, promote enlargement and/or atrophy of key internal organs and tissues and alter the hormonal and immunological status. At high intakes, lectins can seriously threaten the growth and health of consuming animals. They are also detrimental to numerous insect pests of crop plants although less is presently known about their insecticidal mechanisms of action. This current review surveys the recent knowledge on the antinutritional/toxic effects of plant lectins on higher animals and insects. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15302522/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15302522/ It appears that lectins are degraded by heat, thus the importance of proper cooking.
- chomp 4y ago
  Hmm, lectins don't typically affect the liver to this degree though... I know they said their toxicology came back negative, but this sounds like toxin contamination of some sort.
  - Jtsummers 4y ago
    At least for those who had their gallbladders removed for gallstones, it's more likely this meal happened to trigger a gallbladder attack (whether from the lentils or something else in it). The lentils being undercooked could have triggered gastrointestinal issues in the other people, and maybe some of the ones with gallstones whose gallstones and gallbladder issues were then discovered by coincidence.
    - UncleOxidant 4y ago
      Yeah, the gallbladder removal part seems odd to me as well. I had gallbladder trouble a few years back and an ultrasound showed that I had a stone. Surgeon wanted to remove my gallbladder, but I found that moving to a vegan diet completely ameliorated the symptoms so I did not have the surgery done. When researching this I found that many people are found to have gallstones in the course of imaging for other issues and they often never have had any gallbladder pain or issues. The conclusion was that the presence of gallstones does not in itself indicate gallbladder removal. As you're saying, I suspect that the docs were having trouble figuring out what was wrong, noticed there were gallstones present and decided to remove the gallbladder to see if that would help.
    - pdevr 4y ago
      This is a possibility. The mere existence of gallstones does not necessitate the removal of gallstones[1]. In this case, it is likely the pain, because it was similar to the one experienced with those having gallstone issues, was wrongly linked to the presence of gallstones. [1] https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/gallstones/symptoms-causes/syc-20354214 https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/gallstones/sy...
  - elliekelly 4y ago
propter_hoc 4y ago
What the heck? This is completely bizarre. Gallstones don't develop overnight from eating one weird food, and I'm not aware of any other reason gallbladder removal surgery would be performed..
- decebalus1 4y ago
  Cholecystectomies can also be performed in cases of cholecystitis (inflammation of the gallbladder) which can of course be caused by gallstones but also by infections of the bile tract, reduced blood flow to the gallbladder and other nasty things like tumors. Not sure how exactly this product caused the inflammation though..
  - _benedict 4y ago
    Also anything that affects gut motility, so anything that messes with the nervous system in the gut. If the signalling controlling eg the sphincter is messed up, the bile won’t escape to the intestines, and if the bile stops flowing you’ll get liver and pancreatic inflammation. It might be that some toxin in the food could cause such an effect? I’m not sure how easy it would be to tell if this was the case in an acute setting though. It isn’t exactly common, and is usually chronic and intermittent. Gall bladder removal would seem to be the wrong treatment in this case, but it might be hard to establish? My amateur medical knowledge is insufficient to know, just hypothesising other potential mechanisms.
    - decebalus1 4y ago
      You're spot on about bile not flowing. I'm very interested in the final verdict on this. I'm also not an expert, just someone who parted with their gallbladder a while back and became a major consumer of information on gallbladder pathology.
  - Engineering-MD 4y ago
    Acalculi cholecystitis (cholecystitis not caused by gallstones) is rarely treated with surgery, it is usually just antibiotics. Cholecystectomies are indicated in cholecystitis, gallbladder tumours and gallbladder perforations (rare).
tedunangst 4y ago
For reference, about 1 in 500 people have their gallbladder removed each year in the US.
- poulsbohemian 4y ago
  I'm surprised it isn't higher... feels like many people over about 70 that I know have theirs removed kinda along with getting knee and hip replacements, prostate surgery, etc. I honestly thought it was something every older person needed to have on their radar as a possibility.
  - TheDong 4y ago
    > I honestly thought it was something every older person needed to have on their radar as a possibility. I mean, to me 1/500 chance per year sounds like it's right along the lines of "every older person needed to have on their radar as a possibility". The average person lives to 80, so 1/500/yr means a 16% chance per person of having to undergo that operation. That definitely seems high enough to be "every person should have it on their radar as something that might happen to them".
aaron695 4y ago
shiftpgdn 4y ago
I am one of the people affected by the daily harvest lentils. I did not need major surgery but ate them after Daily Harvest sent an email saying they were perfectly safe and to make sure they reached 165F. Daily Havrest has offered me a $10 credit towards future orders even though I became very ill from their negligence and have spent thousands of dollars with them in the past on their service.
- killingtime74 4y ago
  Wow $10 is worse than nothing
  - elbigbad 4y ago
    $10 is terrible. Reminds me, I had a Lyft driver. Took me from the airport, absolutely FLEW, tailgated an ambulance with its lights on for 2 miles, literally nearly hit two pedestrians, ran through a couple red lights just late enough after they turned that other cars were starting to enter the intersection from other sides. I was scared with my very visibly pregnant wife in the car, but it was a 15 minute drive and much of it was quick highway turns so didn’t feel comfortable telling the driver to stop. I left my first bad review on Lyft writing a detailed account similar to above. Lyft messaged me “are you ok we take safety paramount” and the resolution was a scant “we won’t match you with this person again, $5 off your next ride.” That was honestly worse than no response. I spend hundreds of dollars on rideshares monthly and this was a first.
    - Fatnino 4y ago
      What did you want them to do? Buy you a Rolls-Royce and a chauffeur?
  - Bilal_io 4y ago
    It's an insult. Xfinity pissed me off when I contacted them regarding the 3rd or 4th service interruption within a month where each lasted ~5 hours, and they offered me $10 credit.
  - deleted 4y ago
londons_explore 4y ago
Everyone involved here has a good incentive to find out what was wrong with the food. Yet nobody seems to have done so. There are 28,000 jars of it, and only one needs to be found to test. Is it that hard to figure out what in food causes a violent reaction?
_benedict 4y ago
This sort of reminds me of Lupin Beans that I discovered and started eating in large quantities before (thankfully quite quickly) finding out are actually very dangerous if not properly prepared, and that even properly prepared (as they probably were) they may be ill advised for regular long term consumption due to their effects in the nervous system. Their acute toxic effects sound a little different, but I wonder if some similar issue occurred here.
tux2bsd 4y ago
I also don't eat lentils very often, I'm not a vegan. When I do cook them my self instructions are "make hot". I by canned, from dry is too much arsing about. Why is the top comment not two things? A) How to cook lentils from can. B) How to cook lentils from dry.
- greenyoda 4y ago
  > A) How to cook lentils from can. Canned lentils are already cooked. You just need to warm them up.
  - tux2bsd 4y ago
    Yes, that's how canned goods work. Turns out my method is sound. edit: shit I spelled buy wrong.
morninglight 4y ago
I eat lentils because they are cheap, easy to prepare, nutritious and taste great. I have eaten them for many decades with no ill effects. There are several packages of lentils in my pantry right now, and none of them indicate a requirement for cooking at a temperature above boiling water. This story is nuts. I don't know what crazy poo-poo Daily Harvest was selling, but it sure as hell wasn't lentils that caused this problem.
- rcurry 4y ago
  There’s some weird stuff out there with beans and nuts. One time my wife and I were moving from WI to NY and we stopped in a Denny’s to get some food. We order a couple of breakfast skillets and when she takes a bite of one she instantly spits the food onto her plate. I was freaked out because I’d never seen her do something like that in public. I’m like “What’s wrong?” and she says “This is poisoned. It’s contaminated.” I didn’t believe her so I took a bite of her food and it was fine. Then she drinks some water and spits that up as well. I try it and there’s nothing wrong. Long story short I freak out and call her doctor, worrying she might be having a stroke or some other weird issue. The doctor can’t help, just says “Schedule an appointment.” So I call my old man who is an immunologist and he’s like “Oh wow, she can’t eat food? Says the water tastes like metal? That’s weird, let me think about this.” Then a minute later he’s like goddamned House MD, he says “you guys are moving right? Did you clean out your fridge?” I’m like “Well, yeah, of course.” So he says “Your wife is into baking right? You’ve got all kinds of shit in your fridge. When you were cleaning it out you didn’t happen to eat any pine nuts, did you?” I thought about it and then I was like “Yeah, we had a bag of frozen pine nuts and we both ate a handful of them.” He laughs and says “She’s got Pine Mouth, it’s a weird olfactory reaction to certain types of pine nuts. She’ll be okay in a day or so.” I’d never heard of Pine Mouth before. And I guess neither had our doctor. Thankfully we had a drunk seventy five year old immunologist on tap.
noduerme 4y ago
The strongest speculative case I've heard so far (somewhere on Reddit, from someone who survived this) was that it was caused by aflatoxin from mold growing on the dry lentils. Aflatoxins cause severe liver damage and are not broken down by cooking. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aflatoxin https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aflatoxin
- yawnxyz 4y ago
  There's an article floating around somewhere that the FDA did test for aflatoxins (and other toxins) and all came back negative
pdevr 4y ago
Daily Harvest says their testing (done by third parties) has ruled out Aflatoxins[1]. Looks like they are testing their own existing samples (from their supply chain or from their stock), which may or may not be contaminated. I will place more trust on FDA's testing at this point, which is done with the kits obtained from those who actually suffered symptoms. [1] https://www.daily-harvest.com/content/french-lentil-leek-crumbles-advisory# https://www.daily-harvest.com/content/french-lentil-leek-cru...

110 points by ilamont 4y ago

The story doesn't discuss what's causing this, but another story in Rolling Stone has a plausible lead: > “They [company] were kind of implicating the customer in not cooking them correctly, but I definitely did because I cook a lot of vegetarian stuff,” says Aarts, who is a vegetarian and allergic to gluten. She says she sautéed the lentils until they started to crisp and even blacken a bit because she knows they need to be cooked thoroughly. https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/daily-harvest-influencer-gallbladder-hospital-lentil-recall-1372422/ https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/daily-... It turns out lentils contain lectins, a class of molecules with some alarming chemical characteristics: > Lectins are carbohydrate binding (glyco)proteins which are ubiquitous in nature. In plants, they are distributed in various families and hence ingested daily in appreciable amounts by both humans and animals. One of the most nutritionally important features of plant lectins is their ability to survive digestion by the gastrointestinal tract of consumers. This allows the lectins to bind to membrane glycosyl groups of the cells lining the digestive tract. As a result of this interaction a series of harmful local and systemic reactions are triggered placing this class of molecules as antinutritive and/or toxic substances. Locally, they can affect the turnover and loss of gut epithelial cells, damage the luminal membranes of the epithelium, interfere with nutrient digestion and absorption, stimulate shifts in the bacterial flora and modulate the immune state of the digestive tract. Systemically, they can disrupt lipid, carbohydrate and protein metabolism, promote enlargement and/or atrophy of key internal organs and tissues and alter the hormonal and immunological status. At high intakes, lectins can seriously threaten the growth and health of consuming animals. They are also detrimental to numerous insect pests of crop plants although less is presently known about their insecticidal mechanisms of action. This current review surveys the recent knowledge on the antinutritional/toxic effects of plant lectins on higher animals and insects. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15302522/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15302522/ It appears that lectins are degraded by heat, thus the importance of proper cooking.

chomp 4y ago
Hmm, lectins don't typically affect the liver to this degree though... I know they said their toxicology came back negative, but this sounds like toxin contamination of some sort.
- Jtsummers 4y ago
  At least for those who had their gallbladders removed for gallstones, it's more likely this meal happened to trigger a gallbladder attack (whether from the lentils or something else in it). The lentils being undercooked could have triggered gastrointestinal issues in the other people, and maybe some of the ones with gallstones whose gallstones and gallbladder issues were then discovered by coincidence.
  - UncleOxidant 4y ago
    Yeah, the gallbladder removal part seems odd to me as well. I had gallbladder trouble a few years back and an ultrasound showed that I had a stone. Surgeon wanted to remove my gallbladder, but I found that moving to a vegan diet completely ameliorated the symptoms so I did not have the surgery done. When researching this I found that many people are found to have gallstones in the course of imaging for other issues and they often never have had any gallbladder pain or issues. The conclusion was that the presence of gallstones does not in itself indicate gallbladder removal. As you're saying, I suspect that the docs were having trouble figuring out what was wrong, noticed there were gallstones present and decided to remove the gallbladder to see if that would help.
  - pdevr 4y ago
    This is a possibility. The mere existence of gallstones does not necessitate the removal of gallstones[1]. In this case, it is likely the pain, because it was similar to the one experienced with those having gallstone issues, was wrongly linked to the presence of gallstones. [1] https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/gallstones/symptoms-causes/syc-20354214 https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/gallstones/sy...
- elliekelly 4y ago

propter_hoc 4y ago

What the heck? This is completely bizarre. Gallstones don't develop overnight from eating one weird food, and I'm not aware of any other reason gallbladder removal surgery would be performed..

decebalus1 4y ago
Cholecystectomies can also be performed in cases of cholecystitis (inflammation of the gallbladder) which can of course be caused by gallstones but also by infections of the bile tract, reduced blood flow to the gallbladder and other nasty things like tumors. Not sure how exactly this product caused the inflammation though..
- _benedict 4y ago
  Also anything that affects gut motility, so anything that messes with the nervous system in the gut. If the signalling controlling eg the sphincter is messed up, the bile won’t escape to the intestines, and if the bile stops flowing you’ll get liver and pancreatic inflammation. It might be that some toxin in the food could cause such an effect? I’m not sure how easy it would be to tell if this was the case in an acute setting though. It isn’t exactly common, and is usually chronic and intermittent. Gall bladder removal would seem to be the wrong treatment in this case, but it might be hard to establish? My amateur medical knowledge is insufficient to know, just hypothesising other potential mechanisms.
  - decebalus1 4y ago
    You're spot on about bile not flowing. I'm very interested in the final verdict on this. I'm also not an expert, just someone who parted with their gallbladder a while back and became a major consumer of information on gallbladder pathology.
- Engineering-MD 4y ago
  Acalculi cholecystitis (cholecystitis not caused by gallstones) is rarely treated with surgery, it is usually just antibiotics. Cholecystectomies are indicated in cholecystitis, gallbladder tumours and gallbladder perforations (rare).

tedunangst 4y ago

For reference, about 1 in 500 people have their gallbladder removed each year in the US.

poulsbohemian 4y ago
I'm surprised it isn't higher... feels like many people over about 70 that I know have theirs removed kinda along with getting knee and hip replacements, prostate surgery, etc. I honestly thought it was something every older person needed to have on their radar as a possibility.
- TheDong 4y ago
  > I honestly thought it was something every older person needed to have on their radar as a possibility. I mean, to me 1/500 chance per year sounds like it's right along the lines of "every older person needed to have on their radar as a possibility". The average person lives to 80, so 1/500/yr means a 16% chance per person of having to undergo that operation. That definitely seems high enough to be "every person should have it on their radar as something that might happen to them".

aaron695 4y ago

shiftpgdn 4y ago

I am one of the people affected by the daily harvest lentils. I did not need major surgery but ate them after Daily Harvest sent an email saying they were perfectly safe and to make sure they reached 165F. Daily Havrest has offered me a $10 credit towards future orders even though I became very ill from their negligence and have spent thousands of dollars with them in the past on their service.

killingtime74 4y ago
Wow $10 is worse than nothing
- elbigbad 4y ago
  $10 is terrible. Reminds me, I had a Lyft driver. Took me from the airport, absolutely FLEW, tailgated an ambulance with its lights on for 2 miles, literally nearly hit two pedestrians, ran through a couple red lights just late enough after they turned that other cars were starting to enter the intersection from other sides. I was scared with my very visibly pregnant wife in the car, but it was a 15 minute drive and much of it was quick highway turns so didn’t feel comfortable telling the driver to stop. I left my first bad review on Lyft writing a detailed account similar to above. Lyft messaged me “are you ok we take safety paramount” and the resolution was a scant “we won’t match you with this person again, $5 off your next ride.” That was honestly worse than no response. I spend hundreds of dollars on rideshares monthly and this was a first.
  - Fatnino 4y ago
    What did you want them to do? Buy you a Rolls-Royce and a chauffeur?
- Bilal_io 4y ago
  It's an insult. Xfinity pissed me off when I contacted them regarding the 3rd or 4th service interruption within a month where each lasted ~5 hours, and they offered me $10 credit.
- deleted 4y ago

londons_explore 4y ago

Everyone involved here has a good incentive to find out what was wrong with the food. Yet nobody seems to have done so. There are 28,000 jars of it, and only one needs to be found to test. Is it that hard to figure out what in food causes a violent reaction?

_benedict 4y ago

This sort of reminds me of Lupin Beans that I discovered and started eating in large quantities before (thankfully quite quickly) finding out are actually very dangerous if not properly prepared, and that even properly prepared (as they probably were) they may be ill advised for regular long term consumption due to their effects in the nervous system. Their acute toxic effects sound a little different, but I wonder if some similar issue occurred here.

tux2bsd 4y ago

I also don't eat lentils very often, I'm not a vegan. When I do cook them my self instructions are "make hot". I by canned, from dry is too much arsing about. Why is the top comment not two things? A) How to cook lentils from can. B) How to cook lentils from dry.

greenyoda 4y ago
> A) How to cook lentils from can. Canned lentils are already cooked. You just need to warm them up.
- tux2bsd 4y ago
  Yes, that's how canned goods work. Turns out my method is sound. edit: shit I spelled buy wrong.

morninglight 4y ago

I eat lentils because they are cheap, easy to prepare, nutritious and taste great. I have eaten them for many decades with no ill effects. There are several packages of lentils in my pantry right now, and none of them indicate a requirement for cooking at a temperature above boiling water. This story is nuts. I don't know what crazy poo-poo Daily Harvest was selling, but it sure as hell wasn't lentils that caused this problem.

rcurry 4y ago
There’s some weird stuff out there with beans and nuts. One time my wife and I were moving from WI to NY and we stopped in a Denny’s to get some food. We order a couple of breakfast skillets and when she takes a bite of one she instantly spits the food onto her plate. I was freaked out because I’d never seen her do something like that in public. I’m like “What’s wrong?” and she says “This is poisoned. It’s contaminated.” I didn’t believe her so I took a bite of her food and it was fine. Then she drinks some water and spits that up as well. I try it and there’s nothing wrong. Long story short I freak out and call her doctor, worrying she might be having a stroke or some other weird issue. The doctor can’t help, just says “Schedule an appointment.” So I call my old man who is an immunologist and he’s like “Oh wow, she can’t eat food? Says the water tastes like metal? That’s weird, let me think about this.” Then a minute later he’s like goddamned House MD, he says “you guys are moving right? Did you clean out your fridge?” I’m like “Well, yeah, of course.” So he says “Your wife is into baking right? You’ve got all kinds of shit in your fridge. When you were cleaning it out you didn’t happen to eat any pine nuts, did you?” I thought about it and then I was like “Yeah, we had a bag of frozen pine nuts and we both ate a handful of them.” He laughs and says “She’s got Pine Mouth, it’s a weird olfactory reaction to certain types of pine nuts. She’ll be okay in a day or so.” I’d never heard of Pine Mouth before. And I guess neither had our doctor. Thankfully we had a drunk seventy five year old immunologist on tap.

noduerme 4y ago

The strongest speculative case I've heard so far (somewhere on Reddit, from someone who survived this) was that it was caused by aflatoxin from mold growing on the dry lentils. Aflatoxins cause severe liver damage and are not broken down by cooking. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aflatoxin https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aflatoxin

yawnxyz 4y ago
There's an article floating around somewhere that the FDA did test for aflatoxins (and other toxins) and all came back negative

pdevr 4y ago

Daily Harvest says their testing (done by third parties) has ruled out Aflatoxins[1]. Looks like they are testing their own existing samples (from their supply chain or from their stock), which may or may not be contaminated. I will place more trust on FDA's testing at this point, which is done with the kits obtained from those who actually suffered symptoms. [1] https://www.daily-harvest.com/content/french-lentil-leek-crumbles-advisory# https://www.daily-harvest.com/content/french-lentil-leek-cru...