Whoops: Whole Foods Mistakenly Labels Chicken Curry Salad As Vegan Curry Salad

Whole Foods has an excellent curry salad that is made in both a chicken and vegan variety. The yummy stuff is sold in locations across the country, but those living on the eastern seaboard may have gotten an unpleasant surprise earlier this week, when several Whole Foods stores mixed up the chicken curry and vegan curry salads. On Tuesday and Wednesday this week, mislabeled salads were sold in 15 Whole Foods stores in five different states.

Stores in Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Maine were all affected be the labeling mix-up, which saw the egg-based chicken salad labels mixed up with the soy-based vegan curry salad labels. According to ABC News, this affected wrapped items that were available in the cold food bar and behind glass. An employee later figured out the mix-up and the items still available for purchase were pulled—but not before people had already purchased the food items.

This is a pretty big problem, for several reasons, one of which is unhappy customers were probably not pleased when the company’s soy-based meat substitute actually turned out to be chicken. There’s also the problem of food allergies—ingredients in the vegan and curry chicken dish are different and anyone who had an egg allergy, etc. could have landed in the hospital thanks to the mistake. Luckily, no hospital visits have been recorded thus far due to the big chicken mix-up.

Personally, I like both the vegan and chicken salad; so, if this had happened to me, I wouldn’t be too bent out of shape about the mix-up. However, if you find out you’ve purchased the wrong curry salad in those locations and aren’t alright with the purchase, you can return the salad for a full refund.