When You Bite Into a Hamburger and Find a Human Tooth Inside

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It’s been nearly a year since we told you about a claim of gross stuff found in food in Philadelphia — the last time around, it was an allegation of a mouse head in a can of chick peas bought at a Philly grocery store — so we thought we’d bring you this things-that-make-you-say-ewwwwwwww tale of a human tooth allegedly found in a hamburger.

Southwest Philadelphia resident Alexandra Aponte claims in a lawsuit she filed in Common Pleas Court that she made the discovery back on November 18th. At the time, she was at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania at 3400 Spruce Street in Philadelphia, she said.

According to the suit, hospital staff served Aponte a hamburger for lunch one day, and when she bit into the hamburger patty, her own teeth made contact with something very hard. That object, she claims, was a human tooth.

Aponte says in the suit that the incident caused “severe personal injuries” to her mouth that required dental surgery. She’s suing for unspecified damages in excess of $50,000, and in addition to the hospital, she’s also named Aramark in the lawsuit, although Aramark says it stopped providing food serves to HUP a decade ago.

There are many, many people who have filed lawsuits because they broke their tooth when biting into food, but lawsuits centering on teeth actually found in food are far more unusual, but not without precedent.

In 2011, a French woman said she found a tooth — crown, root and all — inside of hamburger purchased from a Carrefour supermarket. And in 2015, McDonald’s officials revealed that a human tooth had been found in an order of French fries at one of their Japanese restaurants.

Representatives of the hospital did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Aponte’s lawyers declined to comment.

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