Trader Joe’s Customer Started Shrieking After Noticing What Was Inside Her Bag of Kale: 'Why Is There...'

Walking through the notoriously busy aisles of Trader Joe’s store is a multi-sensory experience. Inside the tropical tiki-themed walls of the store, a frantic mother hauls her shopping cart while trying to soothe her wailing toddler. An employee in a colorful aloha shirt peeking from behind the yogurt cups approaches the baby with a bar of chocolate and a pint of ice cream. Other customers are immersed in grabbing their grocery favorites bursting from the store’s shelves and coffin-style glass freezers – frozen Indian meals, pizzas, ice cream cones, champagne, club soda, fresh veggies, not to forget the stuffed animal toys that are punctuated throughout the aisles.

In the spring of 2018, Grace Goldstein (@GoldsteinGrace) had the same experience when she visited the Trader Joe’s in Washington, D.C. However, as soon as she returned home and opened her bag of groceries, her eyes popped wide open, her jaw dropped, and she froze in a horrifying shock. Sneering from the inside of a bag of grassy green kale was the cold, lifeless eye of a “very dead” lizard, reported PEOPLE.

After noticing the reptile, Goldstein’s reaction oscillated “between denial and horror” for a few moments, she told the outlet. It “amounted to a lot of asking my boyfriend to see the bag of kale and identify the lizard and shrieking and pushing it away and refusing to go near it… and then asking to see it again,” she described. Disgusted and traumatized at the gross discovery, the woman zipped the bag and placed it inside her freezer as proof. Then, they reached out to Trader Joe's. “We had reached out to TJ corporate and weren’t sure if we were also going to bring it back to the local store where we bought it, and didn’t want a decomposing lizard in the fridge. It’s a little too close to my late-night ice cream for comfort,” Goldstein said.

Goldstein also re-posted the image of the gross reptile body lounging in the pack of the bushy green veggie on X. In a follow-up tweet, she tagged Trader Joe's writing, "Why is there a lizard in my kale? Have never been so appropriate." In later days, a spokesperson from the retail outlet chain confirmed to PEOPLE that they were investigating her complaint. “We are committed to providing customers with great products of the highest quality and are currently working with our vendor to look into and address the matter,” the representative said. As for Goldstein, this one experience was too much to even give a thought to bringing kale into her kitchen ever again. “I’m really into spinach now,” she told the media outlet.

Although both spinach and kale are hailed as power-packed kings in nutrition's hall of fame, each veggie has its own star factor. While kale has about 14 percent more protein than spinach, spinach is incrementally higher in fiber, iron, and magnesium. While spinach is more tender and creamier in texture, kale’s bitter, earthy, and chewy nature makes it off-putting for many people, especially picky-eating American kids. For all these cringy picky-eaters and those who have an aversion to green veggies, Goldstein’s story comes as an excuse. If they never tried it before, they’re probably not going to try it now.