Dreyer’s Grand Ice Cream issued a recall this week of Outshine Fruit Bars “due to possible foreign material contamination with glass.” It’s not yet clear what may have caused glass to be present in our nation’s popsicles, but it feels like an appropriate way to cap off a summer of food and drug recalls, historic measles outbreaks, and alarming health alerts in a country where the top health official doesn’t even believe in germ theory.
The Outshine Fruit Bars that have been recalled are the 2.5-ounce six packs in flavors like strawberry, watermelon, grape, tangerine, and black cherry, according to a press release issued by Dreyer’s. The company didn’t immediately respond to questions about what may have caused the contamination with glass.
Consumers shouldn’t confuse this recall with the Pillsbury rolls that contain glass, the sourdough bread with metal pieces, the plant-based chicken nuggets with plastic, the Gas-X with machine coolant, or the baked spaghetti and chicken cobbler meals that contain metal slivers.
If it feels like you’re being inundated with warnings about tainted food and medicine lately, you’re not alone. Recently we’ve seen a recall of 19 million eggs, another recall of jalapeños in 27 states, and who can forget the diarrhea lettuce that’s made everyone learn the term cyclosporiasis? And all of that’s to say nothing of the salmonella that’s hit everything from frozen pizza to granola. Even the potato chips are dangerous.
Food recalls are a normal part of life, but the Trump administration has made America less equipped to respond. And one reason is that our nation’s top health officials literally don’t believe in science. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Secretary of Health and Human Services, who oversees the CDC and FDA, doesn’t believe in germ theory. Kennedy is an anti-vaccine activist who has looked on as the country experiences the highest number of measles cases in 35 years. There have been 2,632 recorded cases of measles so far in 2026 with several more months left in the year. There were 2,286 cases in all of 2025 and just 282 cases in 2024.
The Trump administration, along with the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has decimated America’s public health infrastructure in ways that will be felt for generations. The team at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that’s in charge of responding to cyclosporiasis (the cause of our nation’s diarrhea lettuce) went from 11 people to just three, according to a report from Wired. On July 1, the CDC’s Foodborne Diseases Active Surveillance Network (FoodNet) scaled back monitoring for several pathogens, including cyclosporiasis. Cases currently total 15,716, up 1,821 from the previous week, but that’s guaranteed to be an undercount of the nationwide problem.
There were deep staffing cuts at the FDA last year, all thanks to DOGE, which caused foreign food inspections to fall to historic lows, according to ProPublica. And the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) experienced a 40% jump in complaints about meat, egg, and poultry products in 2025, a historic spike with foreign objects in food the most common type of complaint. Even our pets aren’t safe. Pedigree recalled wet dog food in July over sharp metal fragments, and Oma’s Pride dog food was recalled this week over salmonella.
Summer is winding down, but it’s not even Labor Day yet, which arrives later than usual this year on September 7. What all-American products will we see recalled before the leaves turn? They already recalled two boner pills this month. Maybe we’ll get a recall on baseball and apple pie.
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