Watch out for ‘additives’ accompanying your food

Melvin Durai

Processed food has become extremely popular these days. It’s usually made in factories and packaged well. But you have to watch out for additives. Some are healthier than others. Just ask the Australian man who recently purchased a bag of lettuce from a supermarket called Woolworths and found a rare additive inside the bag: a live green frog. The man, who lives in Esperance, a coastal town in Western Australia, did what any of us would do: he read the product description on the bag just to make sure he had not accidentally purchased “Frog ‘n’ Lettuce.” But the description did not mention “frog” anywhere. It did, however, say “Australian grown,” which meant that the frog was at least a native species. (Natives are much safer than immigrants. Just ask Donald Trump.)

Actually, what the man did was say to his two flatmates: “Bro, there’s a frog in the lettuce.” He was very casual about it, which surprised them. Australia has 230 species of frog, so perhaps the man is just used to seeing them everywhere. The two flatmates, Laura Jones and Billie Le Pine, described the experience during an interview on ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation). Le Pine said the frog was as large as the palm of his hand. “It’s quite a decent-sized frog for a big adventure,” he said. “It would have probably come from the east. Most of our vegetables come from eastern Australia to Esperance. The bag of lettuce does have holes in it to keep the produce fresh, so he had a snack and some air on his way over.” As far as I know, frogs are carnivores. They do not eat lettuce.

However, if there are any insects in the lettuce, the frogs will eat them. Frogs can also eat any live prey that fits in their mouths, including mice, birds and even other frogs. That’s partly why you won’t find two frogs in a bag of lettuce. Woolworths Supermarket issued a statement saying that an investigation is underway to find out why the customer was not charged extra for the frog. No, they didn’t say that. They merely stated that they were investigating the incident and that it was “an isolated event with no other reported cases.” If you’re wondering what happened to the frog, you’ll be glad to know that it didn’t get eaten. Frogs are a delicacy in many parts of the world, but thankfully for this frog, the bag of lettuce was not purchased by Bistro Louis, the French restaurant in Esperance. The flatmates released Greg (yes, they gave it a name) into a local dam, where it is enjoying its freedom and vowing to stay away from lettuce farms. It’s not clear how a frog could have ended up in a bag of lettuce, but it was presumably hiding among the leaves when the lettuce was harvested.

It’s worth noting that the frog is not the first live animal to make a trip inside a food package to a customer’s home. In 2023, a New Delhi man ordered a loaf of bread through an instant grocery delivery platform and was pleased to receive his bread within 10 minutes, but not so pleased to also receive a live rat inside the bread bag. “If 10 minutes delivery has such baggage, I would rather wait for a few hours,” the man wrote on social media. In 2019, a woman in the US state of Wisconsin found a live frog inside a plastic container of lettuce from a grocery store. “This is in a box of lettuce that’s supposed to be triple-washed and organic and healthy,” the woman complained to a local TV station. The lettuce was triple-washed, no doubt, but so was the frog.