Horror at object growing in Tesco vinegar

Mother says: "There is something growing in my bottle of vinegar. It looks like it's got a head."

Eleri Adkins, a 29-year-old expectant mother from Alltwen in Swansea, was horrified to discover a white jelly-like object growing in a bottle of Tesco malt vinegar. What was even more alarming was that she had already put the vinegar onto the chips that she and her two children were tucking into at the time.

She told Wales Online that she had bought the bottle a month earlier, and was adding the vinegar to her dinner when she spotted the object. She says she immediately thought: "I cannot believe it, there is something growing in my bottle of vinegar. It looks like it's got a head."

She took the vinegar back to Tesco, where she received a refund and a bunch of flowers as an apology. The Mirror reported that Tesco planned to carry out a full investigation with their supplier.

The good news is that the bottle hadn't spawned a monster. It was actually a harmless substance made from carbohydrate - which is produced when the natural bacteria in the vinegar reacts to the oxygen in the air. The substance is known as a 'mother' and is technically alive, but isn't quite as horrific as the mutant creature Adkins must first have though had grown in her kitchen cupboard.

Bottles of vinegar will be treated before going to the stores to stop them growing these 'mothers'. However, this one seems to have slipped through the net.

Adkins isn't the first person to have made a discovery in their food which initially seemed like something from a horror film. In September last year, 13-year-old Robyn Hills from Wellingborough in Northamptonshire, was sure she saw a human finger floating in the Lidl cola bottle she was drinking from.

She was first aware of a foreign object in the bottle when she took a swig and felt it touch her lip. She peered into the bottle and screamed when she saw what she thought was a finger. On closer inspection it was a surgical glove - which wasn't ideal, but was decidedly less macabre.

Unfortunately some grizzly discoveries are every bit as horrifying as they first appear. There have been several incidents when dead mice found their way into everything from frozen scampi to loaves of bread and jars of curry sauce.

One of the most unpleasant was in September 2012, when 31-year-old Katie Crabtree bit into her BLT sandwich and discovered she had bitten into a mouse. Apparently she had assumed it was just a bit of darker meat, but when she looked more closely she saw a tiny paw and some fur, and realised she'd been eating a dead, sliced mouse.

But the most terrifying of all time must have been in February 2009 when Clarence Stowers bought a pint of frozen yogurt from Khohl's Frozen Yoghurt Shop in Wilmington NC. What he didn't know was that just before his purchase, a worker packing the yoghurt had been in an accident and lost his finger. The finger had found itself into Stowers' food. It was only when he put a spoon of dessert into his mouth that he discovered the finger hidden inside.