May Contain Rocks or Insects: Trader Joe’s Adds Falafel and Soup to Its List of Recalled Food Items

On Friday, July 21, Trader Joe’s issued a recall for two kinds of almond cookies—Almond Windmill Cookies, and Dark Chocolate Chunk and Almond Cookies—due to the possible presence of rocks.

Last week, the store added two more products to its recall list: Fully Cooked Falafel, which also may contain rocks; and Unexpected Broccoli Cheddar Soup, which may contain insects. (For the record, the word unexpected here refers to “Unexpected Cheddar,” a special variety of Trader Joe’s cheddar with surprising parmesan overtones.)

Only soup with use-by dates between Tuesday, July 18 and Friday, September 15, 2023, is affected. You can either toss it out or return it to Trader Joe’s for a refund. All Fully Cooked Falafel, no matter the use-by date, should be tossed or returned. Whatever you find on the shelf during your next Trader Joe’s trip should be good, though—the company said in a statement that “all potentially affected product has been removed from sale and destroyed.” Trader Joe’s also said that “No known adverse health effects have been reported to date” with regard to the soup, specifically. 

According to Food & Wine, the soup ingredient potentially harboring insects is the broccoli florets. Trader Joe’s hasn’t offered any extra information on which ingredient is responsible for the rocks in the cookies and falafel, though it might be worth noting that all three products contain enriched wheat flour. The FDA hasn’t published any details about the recalls; if it does, you can find them here.

If your personal favorite Trader Joe’s product is among those recalled, at least its absence is only temporary. These discontinued items weren’t so lucky.