A woman had her gallbladder removed on Friday after eating French Lentil & Leek Crumbles from direct-to-consumer smoothie company Daily Harvest, according to a lawsuit.
The victim is among hundreds who have reported severe abdominal pain after eating the frozen item made by the New York City-based vegan food delivery company, whose celebrity backers include Gwyneth Paltrow, Serena Williams, Bobby Flay and Shaun White.
Last week, Daily Harvest recalled 28,000 units of the “crumble,” billed as a savory, protein-packed topping on meals, after 470 customers reported to the company that they had adverse reactions, including gastrointestinal issues.
Other customers reported their experiences on social media platforms describing severe pain and trips to the emergency room. One victim’s post — Cosmopolitan magazine’s digital creative director Abigail Silverman — went viral on TikTok.
Silverman, like many other influencers, received a free package of the item from Daily Harvest which made her violently ill and landed her in the hospital.
According to the lawsuit filed Sunday in the US Southern District of New York, Carol Ann Ready of Tulsa, Okla. was rushed to the hospital by her husband on May 30 and remained there for four days as doctors performed tests that showed she had “liver and gallbladder dysfunction” and advised her that she could suffer pain from the condition “indefinitely.”
Several weeks later, Ready was advised to have her gallbladder removed “instead of attempting to manage her pain,” the lawsuit claims.
Ready’s is the first lawsuit against New York City-based Daily Harvest, according to her attorney, Bill Marler. He told The Post that he has been retained by 75 people, “most with stories nearly identical to Ms. Ready’s,” adding that “we are in the process of testing nearly two dozen leftover products to determine what ingredients in these products would cause such severe symptoms.”
Other customers have described “debilitating” stomach pain as well as fever and full body itching, according to social media posts on Reddit. The Food and Drug Administration is also investigating the mysterious illnesses and testing products that made customers ill, according to the social media posts.
Daily Harvest, which makes gluten free, vegan frozen meals, was founded in 2015 and two years later raised $43 million from private equity funds and a coterie of celebrity investors.
Daily Harvest said in a statement last week that its “working closely with the FDA and with multiple independent labs to “get to the bottom of this.”
The company did not immediately respond for comment regarding the lawsuit.
So far no specific pathogen has been identified in the outbreak but the recall has narrowed down the time frame in which the tainted product was made from April 28 to June 17.
The recall follows a number of other mysterious outbreaks that have made thousands of consumers ill who ate dry cereal brands, including Lucky Charms and Cheerios, as The Post has reported.
In a statement last week, Daily Harvest said, “We are doing everything we can, as quickly as we can to identify the root cause. Nothing matters more than the health and safety of our customers and we deeply value the trust you put in us and our food every day.”
