An Instagram creator who posts as @itsjustfaithy has turned a disappointing grocery discovery into a public service announcement, sharing a video, viewed more than 316,000 times, in which she opens a jar of jam purchased from Costco only to find mold underneath what appeared to be an intact, sealed lid.
According to the creator, the jar looked entirely normal from the outside, with a safety seal that gave no visible indication anything was wrong inside. It was only after opening the jar that she discovered mold had developed, despite the seal appearing intact and unbroken, a detail that forms the crux of her concern and the reason she chose to share the experience publicly rather than simply discarding the jar and moving on.
Her caption, tagging both @costco_canada and the jam brand @bonnemaman_ca, poses the question directly: “please explain how this happened.” The tone is one of genuine confusion mixed with concern, aimed at prompting a response or explanation from either the retailer or the manufacturer, rather than simply venting frustration without directing it anywhere specific.
The creator uses the moment to pivot into a broader public service message, encouraging viewers to check their own safety seals carefully before consuming packaged goods, even when a seal appears fully intact on first glance. Her framing suggests that an intact-looking seal alone may not be sufficient reassurance that a product’s contents are safe, and that consumers should look more closely at the actual condition of the food itself, not just the packaging, before assuming a product is fine to eat.
Food safety mishap videos have become a recurring and highly shareable category of content, largely because they tap into a very practical, universal concern: the food many people buy and trust without a second thought could, in rare cases, be compromised in ways not immediately visible from the outside. A moldy jar of jam sitting behind an apparently unbroken seal is exactly the kind of unsettling detail that makes viewers pause and reconsider their own pantry items, which likely contributed to the video’s wide reach.
By directly tagging both the retailer and the brand, the creator also situates her video within a growing trend of consumers using social media as a direct line of accountability to companies, bypassing traditional customer service channels in favor of a public post that a wider audience, and potentially the companies themselves, might see and respond to.
The Takeaway
Food safety experts generally note that while a broken or tampered seal is an important warning sign, an intact seal is not an absolute guarantee that a product’s contents are safe, since mold and spoilage can sometimes develop from manufacturing or storage issues unrelated to seal integrity. It’s worth inspecting the actual food, its color, texture, and smell, before consuming anything from a jar or can, even when the packaging looks normal, and discarding any product that shows visible mold, an off odor, or unusual discoloration rather than assuming it’s safe based on packaging alone. Keeping a receipt and reporting the issue to both the retailer and manufacturer, as this creator did, is also a reasonable step, both for a potential refund and to alert the company to a possible quality control issue that could affect other customers.
