Man says his wife cooked meatballs with Kroger ground beef and sweet Italian sausage. Then they bit into something unexpected: ‘Glad nobody got hurt’

A Nashville-area Reddit user said a routine meatball dinner turned into a search for hard bits after he and his wife started eating. In a post on r/nashville, Lock4Local wrote that his wife had cooked meatballs using Kroger brand ground beef and sweet Italian sausage bought at a Kroger on Murfreesboro Road.

He said every meatball they bit into had bits of broken glass or something in it. He added that there was no glass near where she was cooking, and that every dish and kitchen utensil they used was clean. Photos attached to the post showed sauced meatballs on a dark plate and a close-up of small, irregular pieces on a scratched surface.

Lock4Local said he tried calling a 1-800 number, but the complaint could not be filed because the loyalty number was under his wife’s mom’s name. He wrote that they took the bits and the receipt to the Kroger where they bought the meat, and that the store took their information and said it would keep them updated. He said nothing had come since then.

Store follow-up and the packaging the couple no longer had

He tied the worry to recalls he said were happening at the time. “With all of these recalls happening right now, I’m not taking any chances,” he wrote. He also asked whether someone could give a general idea of what the bits could be if they were not glass.

In replies, he said he had just called regulators, but there was not much they could do because the original packaging had not been saved. He explained that they would not have known to keep it, and that the trash had already gone out that night. He added that he planned to shop at Compton’s or Food Lion for a while because, as he put it, their ground meat is done in-house.

He also said a direct try with Kroger did not produce a filed complaint. “They wouldn’t take our complaint or file it because the Kroger number we used was under her mom’s name,” he wrote. One commenter suggested having her mom complain on their behalf.

Another commenter, who said they used to work for the company and at that store, wrote that calling the store should lead to a claim and a report. That commenter told him to save the pictures and send them to the store manager’s email, and said a third party usually calls back later, often in about two days. A separate commenter said investigators normally need the plant number and something about the line the meat came from.

Lock4Local described the person on the phone as stressed. He wrote that he told her, “I know yall have a lot going on right now.” He said she replied, “We have so much going on around the food world right now, I’m just trying to keep my head above water.” Unexpected finds in grocery meat have prompted shoppers to document what they see, as when a man went to buy a 26 pack of ribeyes at Price Chopper and noticed something strange about the meat.

He also answered people who asked why they kept eating. He said it was the first meal he had eaten in 36 hours after a stomach bug, and that he first thought the bits might be settled ingredients in the sausage or gristle. “And it’s such a shame because they were so f–king good despite that,” he wrote.

He later described the shift from “Oh that’s weird. Whatever” to “I may have made a mistake here.” He also wrote that he looked at his wife and said, “That’s it, we’re raising cattle.” For ground beef, the surprises don’t stop at meatballs, as a Walmart shopper said her ground beef looked like brains and nearly half its weight disappeared into grease.

In the comments, one person urged a report to the FDA or USDA and wrote, “Glad nobody got hurt, that’s terrifying.” Another wrote, “Every meatball we bit”??? and questioned why they kept going after the first piece. A different commenter said that if they bit into glass, nothing else from that plate would go into their mouth, because broken glass in food is rarely just one piece.