Fancy yourself a bowl of cereal with a sprinkling of worms?

That's exactly what Rachel Ng got when she purchased a box of Post's Great Grains Banana Nut Crunch cereal from a neighbourhood convenience store in Bukit Batok.

Ng opened the sealed plastic package containing her would-be midnight snack when she found a worm crawling out of it and onto the box:

[video width="464" height="848" mp4="https://static.mothership.sg/1/2017/09/cereal3.mp4"][/video]

She then realised that there were more of these critters in her sealed packet of cereal.

There was also white mould growing on some of the cereal pieces, as you can see in the photo above.

The cereal was also not due to expire until February 2018.

"An isolated incident"

The cereal brand, Post, is headquartered in the United States and is locally distributed by Auric Pacific Marketing.

Mothership.sg contacted a representative from Auric Pacific Marketing, who said:

"We believe this could be an isolated incident but we will conduct a random check at store and in our warehouse."

Auric's representative told us that as distributors, they are unable to respond to questions about quality control. But in order to ascertain the source of the mealworms, they said they will collect the affected cereal packet from Ng for further review.

The distributor also offered Ng a $20 NTUC voucher to replace the worm-infested box of cereal.

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When Ng returned to the convenience store where she purchased it to report what she had found, she was told, quite shockingly, by the shopkeeper that the presence of such mealworms in food products is "normal".

However, Ng said he offered her a refund and said he would help her file a complaint with the distributor.

Worms do show up on cereal, grains and groundnuts if not stored properly

By the way, in case you're interested to know, these worms are larvae of the Indian meal moth.

Indian mealworms take about 27 days to grow into a full-sized moth, which looks like this:

Also known as pantry moth larvae, they are commonly found on cereal grains, dried fruits and groundnuts if the food items were not stored properly.

That said, though, Ng's box of cereal, alongside the packet within, was brand-new and unopened — which makes this more of a mystery, and perhaps more disturbing.

Moral of the story: scrutinise every pack of cereal or food you purchase to make sure it's sealed properly. Even if it is, still check the inside for, ahem, anything that might be moving inside.

Top photos courtesy of Rachel Ng

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