This morning started out like any other Monday would in my house. I woke up at 7:15am, put my feet onto the cold wood floor and made my way out of my room to rouse my children. My daughter is 8, and she is a pretty easygoing child - you give her a morning hug and tell her it's time to get of bed and like a flash, she is dressed and down for breakfast. My 10 year old son is a different story. I think there is some kind of time shift that happens to boys at this stage of life - as if their bodies have kicked them into the Pacific Standard Time zone (we're in Toronto, which means everything is 3 hours back in BC). He can't get to sleep until 11pm, and won't comfortably wake up until 10am - which means at 7:30am he is one really grumpy kid.
Anyhow, I get the kids to spring into action and while they're getting ready for school, I head to the kitchen to make their lunches. It's a mighty cold day today, so I figured a hot lunch was appropriate. I gathered their food containers and began heating up some water to fill them up to warm them. I suddenly noticed that there was an unpleasant odour coming from the Thermoses. I looked at them and they were clean looking - shiny, gleaming stainless steel. I poured the hot water out and washed them with a sponge and soap - still smelly! Then, like a lightbulb turning on, I focused my attention on the silicone seam that separated the steel from the plastic screw top. I brought the Thermos up to my nose and sniffed - EWWWWWW! It had a rotting, almost ammonia smell to it. I took out a bamboo toothpick and ran the tip of it along the top and the bottom of the silicone seam, and out came this black sludge - it was literally a sludge of composted matter that got stuck in between the seam that separates the steel from plastic of the Thermos over the year. All I could think about was, "what kind of bacteria and other harmful things are growing there, leeching into the kids' food? Could this have been avoided?". What made it even more disturbing to me is that when it comes to cleaning these things, I am thorough. VERY THOROUGH. I go over it with a sponge, then work it over with a brush - this sludge that I pulled out only came out with 2mm of toothpick inserted into the thin crack, and then pulled along the length of the silicone band. After I removed the toothpick and rinsed out the jars, the sludge oozed out on its own (see below). I then looked at the lids - they also had a thick silicone band, and when I reamed a bamboo toothpick in them, the black sludge came out as well.
This was something that really freaked me out so I called Thermos Canada and I spoke to a customer service representative. I explained the situation and added that I was really disappointed in the product. Her initial solution was to use a brush and baking soda. I told her that the brush would not be able to infiltrate the area between the silicone seam and that solution was unacceptable. She then told me that I could bring the food jars to the office and that once they got my jars, she would ship out replacements that don't have the silicone seam - there are new jars that have metal all the way up in a continuous fashion - no silicone seams.
So if you have Thermoses that look like these, check that little strip of grey separating the metal from the plastic on the Thermos - chances are, if you've been using these for a while - you've got some sludge built up. The picture below is just a fraction of the stuff I pulled out of 2 inches of seam - I wonder what kind of stuff is growing in that! I am going to take Thermos up on their offer to replace these food jars with their new ones. I'll let you know how it goes.
