Is the Nestle-Issued Recall of Lean Cuisine Chicken Products Reported Enough?

Dieters, beware: According to the Nashville Business Journal, Nestle Prepared Foods Co has issued a recall on the Lean Cuisine brand. If you're about to have a heaping helpful of Pesto Chicken with Bow Tie Pasta, Chicken Mediterranean and/or Chicken Tuscan, please stop. Not only are those Lean Cuisine entrées an excellent source of vitamins for those hoping to eat healthy and stay fit; the ones produced, according to the site, between the dates of August 18 and October 27, may contain pieces of blue plastic.

The recall is not listed under the Lean Cuisine website's 'product buzz' category, where perhaps such news belongs. In fact, information on the recall is not easily accessed on either the Lean Cuisine site or on the homepage of parent company Nestle. This raises the question: is enough being done to prevent consumer harm?

The government, according to the United States Department of Agriculture's website, considers the potential health risk of the product being recalled to be "high", deserving of a Class I title, which is defined by the USDA as a hazard with a "reasonable probability" of "serious, adverse health consequences or death". However, with the re-emergence of yellow journalism, wherein shock and awe isn't just a military tactic but also the main strategy of the media core, these stories, like the recall of Lean Cuisine, which could benefit public health by being promoted, are instead overlooked for more sensationalist news. If the company isn't giving out the information and the mass media isn't carrying it, how are consumers expected to learn of the high risk?

Doubtless, the news of the lean cuisine recall will eventually spread, but it seems almost a guarantee that it won't go far until someone dies or is seriously injured in the consumption of small, blue, hard plastic. But whether or not the mainstream media steps up to the plate and starts aiming their reports towards prevention is going to be something decided by their audience. Are consumers of various products (but including healthy alternative meals like Nestle's Lean Cuisine) going to support their actions? The choice, though collective, is decided on the individual level, person-by-person as they go about their lives.

But hopefully, not while they eat the Lean Cuisine chicken.