Children have been digging for decades through their grain choices and pricing small prices. But some unfortunate grain-eaters have found worse than a toy dinosaur floating in their breakfast bowls. In 2017, BuzzFeed News reported a long list of stomach discoveries: A woman dug out a thumb stick in her Cheerios and a man bites on a leg from his box of Frosted Mini-Wheats. And this week, Jensen Karp, a former rapper and current writer and podcast host in Los Angeles, joined the corrupt grain club when he found what he was saying shrimp tails, rotmis, en floss in his Cinnamon Toast Crunch.
A Twitter Vete between Carp and the grain mark. CTC is try to wipe his hands off the case while Karp still goes viral with his disgust like him investigation his findings. Slate spoke to Karp when he was on his way to have the possible “rat poo” squares tested.
Slate: Can you guide me through your Monday morning?
Jensen Karp: That’s why we bought the Cinnamon Toast Crunch Saturday at the Costco in Woodland Hills, California. And I’ve been a big fan of Cinnamon Toast Crunch since I was a kid. It’s literally the only cereal I eat, even at 41. I have no shame about it. I pour myself a bowl and eat the bowl. I have a 21 month old, and normally I will eat a second bowl and give him some. He thinks it’s like cookies.
I was getting my second bowl ready when something exploded out of it. I was like, What is it? At first I thought it was a grouping of two pieces of grain together. But then I looked closer, and I was like: It’s a shrimp tail! There could be nothing else. There was no other option.
And then I looked in the bag and there’s another shrimp tail on top. And they are covered with sugar and look processed.
What was your reaction to seeing it?
I wanted to get into traffic. I pushed it away and was like yuck. And I immediately sent a photo of it to my wife. I went through the complaint form process on the General Mills website and also tweeted the picture online.
Now you have gone viral. And you fight with Cinnamon Toast Crunch.
I like Cinnamon Toast Crunch. I do not want them to look stupid. I want to be nice to them forever. But the only reason it’s viral is because they’ve been so insane with it. reaction.
I would have dropped it immediately if CTC was like, ‘Hey, we’re going to investigate and call Costco and do all the things we need to do to protect people with shellfish allergies or people who buy Cinnamon Toast Crunch because it’s kosher. We will take care of this. “Instead, I got the exact opposite. They were very nice with private messages, but in public they posted it really weird reaction where they said: Hi, we’re investigating this. It’s not a shrimp tail. It is an accumulation of sugar. And there is literally no world where people think it’s not a shrimp. It’s a shrimp tail.
And at that point, it just made me angry. And my friend called me and was like, ‘Dude, you have to go through the rest of the bag.’ I never even thought about doing that. In the bag was found a piece of string, resembling a pistachio nut that had also gone through the sugar coating process, and some of the squares had black spots coming up on it. Some squares also have a red dye on them. And when my wife came home, she said we should look at the other bag. And in the other bag there is a piece of dental floss in it and the bag looks like it is stuck.
What is your answer to the people who says it’s all just a publicity stunt?
I do not even have something to promote. I mean, I have a podcast where I would never talk about it or joke about it. This is not something I necessarily want to remember. This is not what I wanted to spend my day on. I do not want to go to poison control.
The items are also cooked on the Cinnamon Toast Crunch cubes. They are all covered with sugar. I do not know how I would do it as a prank. And also, jokes should be funny, which they are not.
Then why not taste the shrimp tails for public confirmation?
No. No one is going to try the shrimp tails. I have a very bad stomach and am drug for OCD. I do not want to play that game. [Karp has since tweeted that he’s sent the tails to a company that has offered to DNA-test them for free.]
What have you eaten since the incident?
I have not eaten since. I’m going to do a juice cleanse today simply because I do not even want to think about eating. I feel very sick. Not physically. But I feel very mentally ill.
Will you ever eat Cinnamon Toast Crunch again?
No, I will never eat it again. It’s such a bummer because it’s really the only cereal I eat. It just struggles.