Soy Milk Horror

This morning Marty and I discovered something gross in a carton of soy milk:

Soy Milk Horror

Yeah. That’s what I said. The Flickr set is here.

When Marty called it to my attention, he said (truly horrible of him) that it looked like something’s trachea. When I finally got up the guts to take a look at it myself, it was gross, yes, but it struck me more as bean curd, and I know that’s what it probably is. However, I don’t know enough about soy milk production, or what can happen to soy milk when it goes bad, to know exactly what would have caused this, so I don’t know if it’s something that might signify unsafe soy milk. Does anyone know enough to reassure me about this?

Needless to say, we dumped the rest of the carton. I’d already consumed three quarters of it over the last week or so, and I obviously didn’t get sick over it—I thought it was fine. The date on the carton is September, no freaky taste or smell. But whether it’s bean curd or something else, it looks old and maybe moldy. We didn’t want to take our chances.

I know that you can make tofu out of soy milk, and I looked around for the soy milk / tofu recipes that have been floating around on the web lately. They confirmed my suspicion that it might be bean curd (or something like that), but they didn’t say anything that made me feel better about it having been in there. Should I notify Silk? Or Sam’s Club? (It figures that on my Last Ever Sam’s Club run, I’d get a carton containing a horrible little creature. I do bulk shopping at Costco now—maybe that’s an even better call than I thought?)

Should I tell someone? Sue someone? (Uh.) Write a concerned letter? Save it in a baggie in my freezer? The fruit flies are getting really excited, but I’m not sure I want to throw away my evidence…

What do you think?

4 Responses to “Soy Milk Horror”

  1. Emii @ 5:59 pm on August 13th, 2007

    I woulda said to call the number on the carton and let them know you found something floating in your milk… and that you’d love to know what it is. :P

  2. JR @ 9:10 pm on October 3rd, 2007

    We just found a relative disgusting thing in our little boy’s Silk soy milk container. We’re glad to hear that you survived, since our son drank some soy milk w/this kind of stuff floating in it, too. (Just today)

    Did you call Silk, and if you did, what did they say? I plan to call them. May I point them to your web site to see this, too?

  3. Megan @ 9:40 pm on October 3rd, 2007

    Interestingly enough, I did call and they were very friendly and helpful, and took down my information to send me coupons. But ha ha, I just realized that I never got any coupons!

    From the things she said, I did feel at the end of the phone call that it was just congealed soy protein and was not harmful to me, but obviously I wouldn’t want to keep drinking it. It was a little creepy, and we sure did drink a lot of the milk in that carton! But we never got sick or anything like that.

    I suppose I wish I HAD gotten the coupons, since we threw away the rest of the carton. But I’m not feeling unfairly dealt with at all, since she was very professional on the phone and there’s some likelihood that they did send them, but got the apartment number wrong, etc.

    I’m probably too forgiving!

    I don’t mind if you send them to the site, though, if my picture helps illustrate your situation too.

    I hope this helps you—be glad to give you more info if you need it. :}

  4. anairda @ 11:28 pm on December 13th, 2007

    I just drank some Silk soymilk today. Then I realized the sides of the container had moldy spots. I think there is definitely something wrong with the soymilk or the container.