12 Big Recalls That Will Always Haunt Frito-Lay

Got a bag of chips in your pantry? They're likely made by Frito-Lay. The king of the chip and snack world, Frito-Lay is the company behind some of your favorite munchies, including Doritos, Cheetos, Lay's, and SunChips. With its history as a company ranging back to 1932, it's perhaps unsurprising that it's had a few issues with its products, but what might surprise you is exactly how many recalls the company has had to conduct. Over the years, Frito-Lay has been forced to recall numerous items due to undeclared allergens, contamination concerns, and foreign objects making their way into your snacks.

Interestingly, while Frito-Lay has had to do a large amount of recalls, not all of these recalls have been as big as you might think. A lot of its issues have only affected a few dozen or hundred bags at a time — which is no doubt a comfort to the company. Some of the other recalls, though, have been a lot bigger, requiring thousands of products to be tracked down by the snack giant due to fears over safety. If you're eating some chips as you read this, you might want to put them away, as what we're about to tell you isn't that appetizing.

While recalling one or two different products is a headache for food companies, it's way less annoying than having to track down six distinct items. Unfortunately, that's exactly what happened in May 2024, when Frito-Lay had to recall a range of snacks in Canada due to Salmonella concerns. Three different varieties of SunChips, two different Munchies Snack Mix sizes, and one of its variety packs all had to be asked back by the company.

As for how the contamination got in: Well, to be fair to Frito-Lay, it wasn't exactly the company's fault. "This action is the direct result of a seasoning supplier's notification that an ingredient supplied to it by a third party was potentially contaminated with salmonella," said a Frito-Lay spokesperson to Food Safety News. The spokesperson went on to clarify that Frito-Lay didn't actually find any Salmonella in the seasoning itself, but it still decided to recall the items just in case anything untoward were to happen. We'd say that was the right call, considering just how nasty Salmonella poisoning can be.

Way back in the distant past of 2023, Frito-Lay rather suddenly discovered that it had a big job on its hands. A customer complaint alerted the company that some key allergen information was missing from its Off The Eaten Path Chickpea Veggie Crisps, which failed to list milk ingredients as a potential allergen. What might have been an isolated or small-scale incident was soon revealed as way bigger, with Frito-Lay eventually having to recall over 16,000 bags of its veggie crisps.

What made things even more complicated was how far the veggie crisps had traveled before they were recalled. The snacks had been shipped to a grand total of 26 different states all across the country. Plus, while the recall notice was put out in November, it pointed out that the affected chips had been in stores since mid-September, increasing the risk that they could be sitting in customers' pantries for months, and making them way harder to track down. On the positive side, at the time of the recall notice, no allergic reactions had been reported as a result of eating the crisps.

Who doesn't love a snack box? Well, you might like them a little less when you hear what some of them may have contained back in January 2024. At the start of the year, The Quaker Oats Company (which is part of the Frito-Lay family, and sells items that have Frito-Lay products in them) had to put out a recall notice for a range of its snack mixes and boxes. The reason was a common, but always-unpleasant one when it comes to food recalls: It was thought that some of the items in these boxes might have Salmonella.

Somewhat annoyingly for The Quaker Oats Company and Frito-Lay, the range of items they had to recall was pretty big. No less than seven different variety packs had to be tracked down, with all of them containing different combinations of delicious treats. On top of this, there were three different snack mixes, and another snack box containing a combination of Quaker Chewy bars and chips. A lot of these items also had different best-before dates, making the task even more irritating.

How harmful can a humble pretzel be? Well, in 2016 we discovered just how much danger these munch-able snacks can hold when four different types had to be recalled thanks to an undeclared peanut allergen. Specific sizes of Frito-Lay's Rold Gold Tiny Twists, Rold Gold Thins, Rold Gold Sticks, and Rold Gold Honey Wheat Braided products all had to be recalled when it was found that they contained flour that had previously been recalled by one of Frito-Lay's suppliers. The supplier discovered that some of its flour had undeclared peanut residue, posing a serious issue for individuals with peanut allergies.

This recall was part of a larger problem that affected way more than just these few Frito-Lay products. Hundreds of snack items from various suppliers were recalled, with some companies having to recall enormous amounts of their items: Hostess, for example, recalled approximately 710,000 cases of product. It was thought that the peanut residue ended up in the flour as a result of cross-contamination, and while there likely wasn't a massive amount in the affected product, even the tiniest trace of peanuts can cause a huge allergic reaction — so folks were right to be cautious.

We don't know about you, but when we rip into a bag of chips and start snacking, we rarely take the time to look into the bag particularly carefully — we just grab handfuls of them and throw them in our mouths. Well, next time, we'll be a bit more cautious, especially if we're buying specific SunChip flavors. Back in 2013, Frito-Lay had to put out a recall of almost 14,000 cases of its 6 Grain Medley Creamy Roasted Garlic SunChips, due to the potential presence of metal mesh in them. Yep, you read that right, people: Metal in your chips. Fun, huh?

To be fair to Frito-Lay, this recall was part of a wider recall conducted by the Dakota Specialty Milling company, which supplied Frito-Lay with the ingredients needed to make the chips. It all stemmed from an incident at its milling facility, when mesh from a defective screen detached and made its way into the food. This recall affected other businesses too, with Wegmans having to track down and recall an extensive range of its bread products that were made with Dakota Specialty Milling flour, which were also at risk of containing metal.

We love our chips with a little bit of spice — but when that spice comes from the risk of infection as opposed to the actual flavor, we'd rather leave them on the shelf. Unfortunately, a few years back Frito-Lay had to deal with the former when it recalled its Jalapeño Flavored Lay's Kettle and Jalapeño Flavored Miss Vickie's Kettle potato chips. It was thought that the chips could contain Salmonella, which may have made its way into the chips via jalapeño powder in the seasoning blend.

What made this recall a little more complicated than others was the fact that it wasn't just the individually purchasable products that were affected. The potentially contaminated flavors were also included in a host of multipack trays and boxes, causing the recall to be slightly larger than Frito-Lay probably would have liked. The good news, though, was that the recall hadn't been initiated in response to anybody getting sick, and instead seemed to be a precautionary move.

Cookies just like grandma used to make? Sign us up — as long as they don't contain anything that's gonna make us sick. Sadly, Frito-Lay couldn't completely guarantee that it'd fulfill that promise back in 2012 when it was forced to recall two sizes of its Grandma's Peanut Butter Sandwich Creme cookies due to undeclared milk and egg allergens. While the ingredients list didn't specify that it contained milk or egg, it was discovered that the artificial butter that was in the cookies may have contained traces of both.

This was a recall that put a big dent in Frito-Lay's pocket, too. The company had to recall 156,462 pounds of product in total, making it way larger than some of its other recall endeavors. With that amount of potentially risky cookies out there, it's a wonder that nobody became sick from eating them. The good news, though, was that the recall wasn't a result of anybody becoming unwell. It's worth pointing out, too, that the presence of these allergens made these peanut butter sandwich cookies especially unfriendly to individuals with allergies, given that they already contained wheat, soy, and peanut ingredients.

Food companies are often forced to recall items — and in a sense, team up with other food companies in doing so — due to a larger issue that can be traced back to a supplier. This was the case in 2009, when Frito-Lay was one of the companies affected by an issue with pistachios from Setton Pistachio. The California-based farm had to deliver the unpleasant news to Frito-Lay that four strains of Salmonella had been found on its pistachios. As a result, Frito-Lay had to roll up its sleeves and put out a recall notice for its 1.75 oz bags of salted, shelled pistachios, which spanned sell-by dates of over five months.

Kraft Foods was also affected by these Salmonella concerns, and had to recall some of its own products. In total, more than 2 million pounds of pistachios had been potentially affected. As this Salmonella scare was happening shortly after the now-infamous Salmonella outbreak of 2008 and 2009, which occurred due to contaminated peanuts, concerns were naturally pretty high around the safety of nuts in general. However, while the peanut-related Salmonella outbreak resulted in hundreds of illnesses, the pistachio-related one luckily seemed to pass without major incident, although it was difficult to identify exactly whether people had become ill from eating them or not.

If you've ever wondered how shelf-stable jarred food doesn't spoil, it's all in the vacuum-sealing process they undergo. When food is placed in jars, the air is then sucked out of it with a vacuum, with the lid on top keeping the oxygen out that causes it to go bad quicker. Unfortunately, this process may not have been working entirely effectively for Frito-Lay in 2019, causing it to have to recall several different Tostitos dip and salsa products when a defect in its jars resulted in the vacuum seal not being entirely airtight.

The concern for Frito-Lay was that this lack of airtightness might lead to spoilage, and therefore a potentially unpleasant product. Importantly, spoiled food doesn't necessarily make you sick. Spoilage bacteria are different from pathogenic bacteria, which are the type that cause illness and can grow on food when it's left in ambient temperatures for too long. It's worth remembering, though, that you never quite know when food has pathogenic bacteria in it, and because dip recipes usually aren't heated before they're eaten, there's no guarantee that they'd be safe.

What exactly is in Cheetos? The exact formulation of these vibrant orange puffs is kind of a mystery, but they have to get all their strong flavor from somewhere. In 2012, though, a few key elements were omitted from Frito-Lay's Korean-made Cheetos, which were available for purchase in Ontario and Manitoba, Canada, adding to the controversy surrounding these snacks. Its BBQ and Hot flavor Cheetos failed to list milk and soy ingredients in its allergen information, which led to the fear that people who were allergic to either or both could end up becoming seriously ill from eating them. As such, a recall notice was put out for the Cheetos flavors, which luckily hadn't been identified as having caused an allergic reaction to anyone at that point.

It's difficult to identify one specific reason that allergens are missing from food labels so often, and instead, there are a few factors that lead to the missing information. Sometimes, the missing info can be a result of printing errors. It can also occur due to changing suppliers or ingredients, which may contain traces or sub-ingredients that have allergens in them. Regardless of the reason, it's vital that food manufacturers keep on top of their allergen info to reduce the risk of serious consequences.

We can thank Disneyland for Doritos, with the amusement part delivering a trustworthy snack to the masses. If you were buying them in certain states back in 2016, though, they could also have been slightly less trustworthy than you think. Frito-Lay had to recall packs of its Spicy Sweet Chili Doritos due to mislabeling, with the chips missing information about potential milk ingredients. These ingredients could have been very risky to folks who had milk allergies, and in the worst-case scenario could have prompted a nasty reaction.

The kicker, though, was that the label was also missing loads of other ingredients, including various flavoring components and colors. Why was there such a big error, we hear you ask? Because Frito-Lay had managed to put the wrong chips in the wrong bag. The chips that were in its Spicy Sweet Chili Dorito packs were in fact Nacho Cheese flavor. The mistakenly-bagged chips had ended up in states like Tennessee, West Virginia, and Kentucky, amongst others, and while nobody had become ill from eating them, we can bet that there might have been a few shocked faces when people bit into them.

When you buy a specific flavor of chips, you can reasonably expect those chips to taste like they normally do. Way back in 2005, though, that wasn't a certainty if you were buying Baked Lays. The snack's sour cream and onion flavor somehow managed to end up in the packaging for its original flavor, which no doubt caused quite a stir (although we have to admit, we'd be pretty excited by ending up with an entirely unexpected flavor of chips).

The issue was not so much of a misbranding one, though — although it definitely was that too — and more of a safety one. The sour cream and onion chips contained milk as an ingredient, which could pose an allergy risk to certain individuals. No wonder Frito-Lay scrambled to get its mislabeled products back. A grand total of 265 cases were recalled, and considering that each case contained dozens of bags of chips, it ended up being a pretty significant endeavor for the food company.