Daily Harvest built itself on the backs of influencers. Now, some are turning on the company because they believe they were sickened by its food.
- Daily Harvest, a meal delivery service, wooed wellness influencers to build its brand on healthy eating.
- But influencers are speaking out against the company after a product was linked to illnesses, hospitalizations.
Hundreds of people have reported illness, and, in some cases, hospitalizations and organ damage, after eating Daily Harvest's French Lentil + Leek Crumbles from April to June, prompting a product recall and an investigation by the Food and Drug Administration. More than 220 people have retained legal counsel to pursue claims against Daily Harvest related to the illnesses, according to attorneys.
Luke Pearson, a 30-year-old vegan wellness influencer, is one of them.
Pearson said he received a PR package from the meal delivery service in April containing the lentils, and filmed clips of himself preparing and trying the product for the first time. But he never got around to posting the videos – shortly after finishing the meal, he developed stomach pain like nothing he'd ever experienced before, he told Insider in an email.
Prior to the incident, he said he ate a plant-based diet, worked out five days a week, and avoided processed foods and alcohol.
Not knowing what caused his illness, Pearson tried the crumbles again about a week later. This time the symptoms worsened, with full-body aches, fever, chills, and "pain so intense" he couldn't stand on his own.
A string of doctor visits and test results seen by Insider showed he had elevated liver enzyme levels, but no indication of what might be the cause.
Pearson also noted symptoms like dark urine, itching, and ongoing fever. He said he eventually developed jaundice — yellowing of the skin and eyes, suggestive of serious liver issues — that prompted a visit to the emergency room that lasted 26 hours and involved more tests, according to a lawsuit. At the time, neither Pearson nor his medical team had connected the symptoms to possible foodborne illness. Doctors suspected a gallstone had caused the elevated liver enzymes.
Pearson said two weeks after he tried the Daily Harvest Lentils, he had his gallbladder removed to prevent further liver problems.
Certain toxins can cause acute symptoms within hours of eating contaminated food, even once, according to Dr. Niket Sonpal, a board-certified gastroenterologist in New York.
Case studies document serious, rapid-onset symptoms including liver failure from food poisoning.
After hearing of people who also ate the lentil crumbles with similar symptoms, Pearson said he and his medical team now believe contaminated food was the cause of his symptoms.
The company, a vegan meal service valued at $1.1 billion last year that delivers smoothies and plant-based meals, built its reputation using influencers and celebrities to market its health-focused products directly to consumers. But now, some of the same type of influencers the company once courted are speaking out against it.
Influencers who say they fell ill after eating Daily Harvest's lentil crumbles shared their experiences on social media
Since his surgery, Pearson has retained an attorney, and has posted on social media about his experience, along with other influencers.
Ashley Stuart, a 27-year-old model in California who has more than 27,000 TikTok followers, said Daily Harvest invited her to come to a pop up event for influencers in May. Stuart, who posts videos about food and home decor, accepted and went to the event in Venice with her girlfriend.
It was the first time she'd heard of the brand, but she felt its mission was aligned with her content, which often features dairy- and gluten-free foods.
The event was a showcase for Daily Harvest's new French Lentil + Leek Crumbles, which at the event were prepared inside tacos. Stuart ate them, thinking at the time the tacos tasted overwhelmingly like cilantro but were otherwise fine. Only influencers had been invited to the May 20 event as a preview before members of the general public were invited to try the crumbles following days, Stuart recalled.
"Influencers had the first taste," she said.
Stuart and her girlfriend took home a Daily Harvest gift card and more of the crumbles. The next day, on May 21, she tried them again at home. She made them and tagged Daily Harvest in her Instagram story. Later that day, both Stuart and her girlfriend experienced stomach pain. They hypothesized it was from the cooking oil or something else they ate.
Stuart tried the crumbles again on June 16. She made them in tacos and said she noticed her throat felt tight after eating. She wondered if she was developing symptoms of acid reflux. Later, when she was taking a walk around her neighborhood, she felt light headed, and she noticed irregularities when she was going to the bathroom. She contacted a doctor via telehealth, who suggested she take a laxative, which did not help her symptoms.
The next day, Stuart said she felt worse and asked her girlfriend to take her to the ER. Her girlfriend also began to feel unwell, she said. Doctors at the hospital ran tests but ultimately couldn't figure out what was wrong and sent her home, she added. She contacted a primary care doctor and scheduled an appointment where the doctor ran more tests.
"Nothing has really changed much," Stuart said, adding that she's had persistent stomach issues and sensitivity to foods. "I've cried everyday since June 16."
Daily Harvest issued its initial press release about the crumbles on June 19, which included a copy of an email sent to customers two days earlier. That June 17 email said a "small number of customers" had reported "gastrointestinal discomfort." The email implied customers may have neglected to cook the lentils to the proper temperature, but directed customers to dispose of the product anyway.
In a followup June 23 press release, Daily Harvest said it received "470 reports of illness or adverse reactions" associated with the crumbles, once again directing customers to throw them out. Daily Harvest additionally said it was working with multiple independent labs, the FDA and experts to determine the cause.
A spokesperson for Daily Harvest in a July 8 statement to Insider said it was unable to comment on "pending or potential litigation," but said the company "immediately took action and launched a voluntary recall" of the crumbles as soon as it identified the "possible link" between the product and "an adverse reaction." The company said it reached out directly to consumers who received the product and worked with third party distributors on the recall.
The exact timeline of when Daily Harvest learned about reports of illness and what immediate actions they took remains unclear, but the company stated in a June 19 press release that it sent a message to customers on June 17 instructing them to not eat the crumbles and by June 23 had received the "approximately 470 reports" about the product. The company has not since said how many reports it has received in total, and it has not said when it received its first report of illness associated with its product.
"All pathogen and toxicology results have come back negative so far, but we're continuing to do extensive testing so we can get to the bottom of this," the spokesperson said. "Everyone who has been affected deserves an answer, and we are committed to making this right."
The fact that Daily Harvest hasn't yet identified what went wrong could mean it's a more complicated problem than just the way the crumbles themselves were made, said Dr. Robert Norton, the chair of Auburn University Food System Institute's Food and Water Defense Working Group.
These types of investigations typically look beyond the food items themselves and can require tests on things like product packaging and transportation materials, said Norton, who is not associated with the Daily Harvest investigation.
"Complex investigations like these can take some time," he told Insider in an email. "Even so there is no guarantee at the start of the investigations that an exact cause will ever be determined."
Daily Harvest built its brand around wellness and sought out conscientious customers and influencers
Started in 2015 by Rachel Drori, Daily Harvest has billed itself as a delivery service for healthy, whole-food alternatives to processed convenience food. It offers a variety of pre-portioned meals that include frozen smoothies, soups and various grains and vegetable bowls. Customers select which meals they want, which Daily Harvest then ships to them in boxes of either 9, 14 or 24 items. The meals run between around $9 to $12 each.
Several high-profile celebrity wellness enthusiasts invested in the company, including actress and Goop founder Gwenyth Paltrow and tennis superstar Serena Williams. Neither returned Insider's request for comment.
Other famous faces who lent their names to the brand's advertising include "The Handmaid's Tale" actress Samira Wiley, comedian Sebastian Maniscalco, and TikTokers Rod Thill and Remi Bader— all of whom appeared in a June 2021 Instagram video for the company.
Along with its celebrity backers, the company also built relationships with content creators in the health and wellness world.
YouTubers have been posting videos about Daily Harvest for years, offering reviews and commentary about the products in videos that often include links to try the service with their own unique discount code. The company has also partnered with popular podcasters, like Girls Gotta Eat.
Influencer connections have long been synonymous with Daily Harvest. The marketing firm Dialogue NYC on its website explained a 2018 campaign that involved promoting the company's Harvest Bowls by forging partnerships with 50 micro influencers.
One 26-year-old creator, whose identity is known by Insider but asked not to be named, had fewer than 5,000 followers when she said the company reached out to her last year. Although she wasn't directly paid to promote the brand, she said Daily Harvest sent her products and a link to share with her followers that would give her a portion of the sales if people bought products through it. (She stopped working with the company before the crumbles debuted, and said she has no plans to work with them in the future.)
The social-media managing software company Buffer noted in a 2019 blog post that "social power" and influencer partnerships were vital to Daily Harvest's success. Around 23% of Daily Harvest's traffic at the time came from YouTube, according to Buffer. Traffic often came from videos from influencers, like a February 2019 video from the YouTuber Wheezy Waiter, which has been viewed more than 3 million times.
Daily Harvest partnerships with influencers can also be long lasting, Wheezy Waiter, who has more than 1.1 million subscribers, has made multiple videos mentioning Daily Harvest products, the most recent posted in February this year.
Lifestyle YouTuber Michel Janse, who has 149,000 subscribers, first posted about Daily Harvest on YouTube two years ago in an unsponsored video that offered followers an affiliate link. She most recently posted about the company in January this year, this time thanking the company for partnering with her. Some influencers, like Janse, even have profiles on Daily Harvest's website that feature their posts about the products.
Drori, who is also the company's CEO, has said influencers and social media played a key role in the success of the brand.
"Both our packaging and products are visually vibrant and lend themselves perfectly to Instagram," she told Insider in 2017.
Daily harvest is facing legal challenges and backlash
Influencers and former longtime customers believe that their illnesses are directly related to the Daily Harvest products they consumed, and many are now seeking compensation from the company. They allege Daily Harvest failed to communicate quickly and clearly to customers about the risk, or address the emotional, physical, and financial costs of illness potentially related to its product.
"I think they suck. They haven't really done much of anything," Stuart, who ate the crumbles at the influencer event near Venice Beach, said. Stuart said she didn't realize that there might be a link between her symptoms and the lentils until she saw a video about them on TikTok on June 19.
Daily Harvest announced publicly it was recalling the crumbles on June 19, telling customers to discard the product and not eat it. The company then issued a voluntary recall notice through the FDA on June 23. Prior to the recall, hundreds of other people had eaten the lentils and reported similar symptoms of gastrointestinal distress, hospitalizations, and potential organ damage.
The most recent update was posted July 12 and reaffirmed that it was conducting "comprehensive testing" to determine the cause of illness. The Food and Drug Administration announced in late June that it was investigating after receiving 133 reports related to the product.
As FDA continues to test samples to determine a possible cause of the illness, more than 170 people have retained the services of Marler and Clark, a Settle law firm that specializes in foodborne illness cases, managing partner Bill Marler told Insider.
The first lawsuit against Daily Harvest was filed June 26 in New York. At least two other attorneys are also working on Daily Harvest-related cases, including Oregon-based attorney Jeffrey Bowersox, who is working with Pearson.
Bowersox told Insider at least 70 people have retained his services to pursue claims against Daily Harvest, including others who have had gallbladder removal surgeries.
Pearson said he has been frustrated by Daily Harvest's response.
One of Daily Harvest's initial responses prompted backlash on social media. The brand's Instagram account first announced the recall notice not through a new post warning of potential danger or an Instagram story alerting consumers, but instead by updating posts that featured glossy images and videos advertising their products. The short caption said only that there was "an important message regarding our 'French Leek + Lentil Crumbles'" and instructed readers to click a "link in bio with details."
Those posts have since been deleted, and have been replaced with more prominent posts that direct consumers to learn more about the recall.
Bowersox alleges the company has not been transparent about when they first received complaints about the product, and has been inconsistent in informing consumers.
"They've been in reputation protection mode," he said.
Waiting on answers, receiving a gift voucher
Some consumers who purchased the crumbles found that Daily Harvest's offer for compensation was a $10 credit for the company's products, far less than what they felt was commensurate with their experience.
Kelsey Evans-Amalu, a 34-year-old wellness coach in Florida who has been a Daily Harvest customer since 2019, told Insider she became sick after eating the crumbles at the end of May. She said she'd since learned more "through Reddit boards and friends" about what might've happened than she had from Daily Harvest.
"I thought that they were better than this considering that they stand on wellness and sustainability," she said.
She received a June 16 email asking her to share feedback on the lentil crumbles. The email called her a "trendsetter" and said she was "one of the first to taste" their new collection. One day later, she received the email that indicated that a "small number" of customers had reported gastrointestinal discomfort" after eating the product.
On June 19, the company sent another email once again directing customers to throw the lentils out due to the reports of "gastrointestinal issues." On June 22, she received an email that invited those who had been impacted by "adverse reactions" to fill out a form with information about their experience. The form included questions about how the product was stored and cooked.
"I think they're being really shady," Evans-Amalu said.
It's still not clear what caused the illnesses. Testing has ruled out hepatitis A, common food borne illnesses like E. Coli, salmonella, and listeria, and toxic molds and fungi, according to a press release from the company.
Pearson said he now has "really intense anxiety around food," especially because his digestive system has been permanently changed since having his gallbladder removed.
"I don't know if I'll ever feel comfortable receiving food products in PR packages again," he said.