Aldi Shoppers Are Trying To Figure Out What's Up With These Sandwich Cookies

Nobody likes to open up a brand new package of snacks they just brought home from the grocery store only to find that the food inside has already gone stale or gotten moldy. And while that is pretty much always a frustrating waste of time and money, it can be even more infuriating if the food in question was something you were really looking forward to. Unfortunately, one Aldi shopper recently had that disappointing experience after they brought home some of the chain's Vanilla Sandwich Creme cookies. They purchased two whole packages of these cookies, only to open them up and find strange black spots dotting the edges of most of the vanilla cookies inside.

While the questionable spots certainly didn't look appetizing, they weren't quite sure exactly what was causing those spots. So they took to Reddit to try to find the answer before simply tossing all of the cookies in the trash. "Vanilla Sandwich Creme cookies: what do you think those black spots are?" the user captioned a photo of the strangely speckled snacks and added, "It was in both packages I bought."

Unfortunately, most of their fellow Reddit users seemed pretty sure the answer was probably something unpleasant. "Well, I hope it is not mold, but that was my first thought...," a Redditor replied. "The kind of fuzzy and ill-defined borders definitely make me think it's something gross. I'd go ahead and get the Twice as Nice guarantee and not eat them just in case," u/alarmagent agreed, while other users speculated it could be "flavor crystals," "bug parts," " burnt particles," or even "mechanical lubricant."

However, one eagle-eyed user did think to ask: "Is there real vanilla bean on the ingredient list?" Real vanilla bean is prone to developing some odd or abnormal coloring, usually due to temperature changes, which can cause "speckles" or vanillin crystals to appear on the outside of the bean, according to Vanilla Pura. And while these imperfections might look similar to mold growth, they are actually perfectly safe to eat. But unfortunately for the original poster, Aldi's Vanilla Creme cookies don't appear to have any real vanilla bean in their ingredients and instead get their sweetness from high fructose corn syrup, sugar, cornstarch, and artificial flavor (via Nutrition Value). So whatever those mysterious spots may be, it is probably best to simply toss those packages of cookies and find a new snack that isn't potentially covered with mold or some other unpleasant additive.