Lean Cuisine Just Issued A Recall, And It's Not For The Reason You Think

If you picked up servings of Lean Cuisine's frozen Baked Chicken meals sometime in early December, it may be time to discard them. The USDA says the manufacturer of Lean Cuisine's frozen dinners, Nestle Prepared Foods, is recalling almost 100,000 pounds of its baked chicken meals, because some of the packages appear to have been contaminated by small pieces of hard white plastic. The recall was announced by the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), which also said that the meals were produced and packaged on Sept. 2, 2020. The chicken meal are ones with "white meat chicken with stuffing, red skin mashed potatoes, and gravy (via Today).

The problem was reported on Dec. 18, when five customers said they found pieces of hard plastic in their frozen dinners. It's likely that the plastic had come from a malfunctioning machinery because, as the FSIS said in its release, "The mashed potatoes used in the production of the baked chicken meals products had pieces of a plastic conveyor belt that broke during production."

Because of the quantity of food involved, the FSIS is worried that the meals might be in your freezer. It asks that if you have that specific Lean Cuisine frozen meal, with a lot code of 0246595911 and "Best Before" date of October 2021, it's best to either discard it or take it back to the supermarket you purchased it from to seek out a refund (via USDA).

This Lean Cuisine recall has been classified as a "Class 1" recall, which means the items in question are considered hazardous, and that the product could cause serious health consequences. While there were complaints about finding the plastic, there were no reports of any injuries, which might have happened as a result of the broken plastic.