PLease tell me how much of a fuss you would make over this...

[Hayls]

Having lunsh yesterday in a supermarket cafe. Ate some of the salad then moved on to the toastie, ate it all then turned back to the salad to find a dead beetle lying belly up in it [bleurgh]. Totally horrified, took (almost empty) plate back to the till and eventually somebody came over and gave me a refund (yipee, £3.00!).
They did apologise but said it wasn't their fault because they buy the salads in in bags ten just tranfer to plates. Ok,I am a bit squeamish at the best of times and I know it's bound to have had things crawling over it in the ground but the only way I can eat fruit/veg is to imagine that there never was (I am officially a wuss) but it has made me feel so ill, every time I eat I imagine the little blighter staring up at me (friend suggested it was belly up cos it was trying to push the lettuce off it- haha).
So what do I do? I drove 5 miles rather than 30 seconds to said supermarket today cos I couldn't face going back in- should I complain further/ contact Environmental Health/...?? Any comments would be much appreciated.

poor you, that's yucky. but i do think you're over-reacting a bit.

Don't blame you! Gross. Yuck. Shudder.

bagged salads generally need to be washed thoroughly

I wouldn't worry about a beetle tbh .. but I'd be feckin' bothered by the stuff they use to 'clean' bagged salad

Agree with Twiglett, they should be washed, not so much for beetles but because bagged salads often contain listeria among other lovelies. You don't know who or what has handled/pissed on/defecated on your salad bagged or otherwise. And those that are pre-washed have been rinsed in chlorine. Lovely.

In parts of Thailand, deep fried cockroach is sold in bags as an appetising snack. Quite high in protein, apparently.

Totally agree, I never eat bagged salad at home precisely for that reason. I assumed it would be fresh though as it was in the supermarket! I'm slightly delicate (ok, a drama queen) and have REAL issues with hygiene and cleanliness as well as a phobia of anything that creeps and crawls. I hate eating out because I'm always checking to see if the plates are clean, peeking into the kitchens, looking at the staff's finger nails etc so this has freaked me out.

A beetle won't do you any harm, even if you accidentally chomped on it. Just try to put it out of your mind, and next time give your salad a poke around before you tuck in.

Don't see any point in involving the environmental health really, if it's a garden beetle and not a cockroach. These things do happen!

some people would have paid you more than £3 just to eat the beetle
anyway dont worry about it it was a free lunch and will do wonders for your diet

Message withdrawn