6 Dead After Eating Prepackaged Pasta Sold at Major Grocery Chains

Six people are dead from eating precooked pasta meals bought at regular grocery stores. Trader Joe's. Walmart. Kroger. The kind of convenient grab-and-heat meals people buy every week without thinking twice.

The listeria outbreak started in June. It's November now and people are still getting sick. The FDA updated the numbers last week: seven new cases across three states, two more deaths. One pregnant woman lost her baby.

Twenty-seven people were infected in total. Twenty-five ended up hospitalized. That's not your standard food poisoning where you feel terrible for a day and move on. That's bacterial infection serious enough to land you in the hospital—or worse.

Cases popped up in 18 states: California, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, North Carolina, Nevada, Ohio, Oregon, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington.

The contamination came from Nate's Fine Foods, a supplier that provided pasta to multiple brands and retailers. One mess-up at the supplier level spread across dozens of products at stores nationwide before anyone noticed.

Check Your Freezer Right Now

These products got recalled in September. If any are sitting in your fridge or freezer, throw them out Immediately:

Home Chef Chicken Fettuccine Alfredo, Marketside Grilled Chicken Alfredo, Marketside Linguine with Beef Meatballs—basically various FreshRealm pasta dishes sold at Kroger and Walmart.

Trader Joe's Cajun Style Blackened Chicken Breast Fettucine Alfredo in the 16-ounce plastic trays.

Deli pasta salads from Albertsons, Safeway, Vons—any store-made pasta salad from Albertsons-owned chains.

Scott & Jon's Shrimp Scampi with Linguini Bowls. Kroger deli pasta salads. Giant Eagle smoked mozzarella pasta salad. Sprouts smoked mozzarella pasta salad.

The outbreak started months ago but new cases keep appearing because contaminated food doesn't vanish when there's a recall. It sits in freezers. People eat it weeks later without connecting it to something they bought back in summer.

Check the FDA's site for a complete list of recalled products.

Why This Keeps Happening

Modern food production means one supplier feeds multiple brands at multiple stores. You think you're buying different products from different places. But it’s the same supplier, same contamination, just different packaging.

Nate's Fine Foods supplied all these brands. When their pasta got contaminated with listeria, it spread everywhere before anyone caught it. That's how you end up with an outbreak across 18 states from grocery store convenience meals.

Listeria Doesn't Mess Around

Listeriosis hits vulnerable people hardest—older adults, anyone with a weakened immune system, pregnant women, and newborns. Symptoms include fever, muscle aches, headache, stiff neck, confusion, loss of balance, and convulsions. Sometimes it starts with diarrhea first.

For pregnant women it's particularly brutal. Miscarriages, stillbirths, premature delivery, and life-threatening newborn infections. Sadly, this already happened to one woman in this outbreak.

The CDC lists listeria as the third leading cause of death from foodborne illness in the U.S. About 1,250 infections yearly and around 172 deaths.

Six deaths occurred just from this pasta outbreak - and counting, apparently, since new cases keep showing up.

The Convenience Tax

Precooked pasta meals exist because people want easy dinners. Grab a container, heat it up, and eat. It’s supposed to be simple and safe.

Except when the food supplier contaminates everything with bacteria that survives refrigeration and some cooking temperatures. Then your convenient dinner becomes a hospital stay.

The FDA keeps telling people to check their refrigerators and freezers. Five months into an outbreak, contaminated food is still out there because people buy stuff, stick it in the freezer, forget about it, and eat it later.

What You Should Actually Do

Go check your freezer. Look for any of those recalled products. If you find them, throw them away. Don't try cooking them extra or assume freezing killed the bacteria. Listeria doesn't care about your freezer.

If you ate any of these products and feel sick—especially if you're pregnant, over 65, or have a compromised immune system—call your doctor. Don't wait to see if it gets better. Listeriosis requires treatment.

The outbreak started in June. Recalls happened in September. It's November and people are still getting infected. That's the problem with nationwide food distribution—once contamination spreads across the supply chain, it takes months to track down every contaminated product sitting in every freezer across the country.

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