A ‘Healthy’ Snack Sold Across America Has Been Recalled Over a Toxic Metal — And It All Started With One Person’s Alarming Test Results

It comes in a crinkly bag, 2 or 3 ounces at a time, with flavors like Original, Radical Ranch and Cheeze It Up. Its whole pitch is that it is the snack you don’t feel guilty about: dark green kale, dried until it shatters like a potato chip, sold in natural-food aisles across the country.

Now the company behind it is telling anyone who still has a bag in the pantry to stop eating it immediately and throw it away.

On Monday, Snack Right Super Foods, Inc., which does business as Brad’s Raw Chips, recalled certain bags of Brad’s Plant Based Crunchy Kale and Brad’s Veggie Chips Kale. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration posted the notice on Tuesday. About 25,000 bags, roughly 2,097 cases, are estimated to be out there.

The reason is a toxic metal most shoppers have never heard of. And the trail that led investigators to these chips didn’t begin in a factory or a lab. It began with one person and a worrying set of results.

The Person Who Started It All

In January 2026, the California Department of Public Health received an inquiry from an individual with elevated levels of thallium, a toxic metal, in their body. State investigators did what they do in these cases: they looked at what the person had been eating.

One item stood out. According to the department, it was Brad’s Plant Based kale products.

So CDPH staff went shopping. They collected samples of Brad’s products from retail grocery stores in the Sacramento region and sent them to the lab. The tests, the department said in a May 19 statement, “confirmed concerning levels of thallium in multiple varieties of Brad’s Plant Based products.”

The list ran to eight products: Crunchy Kale Original, Vampire Killer, Cheeze It Up, Nacho and Radical Ranch, the Balsamic and Ranch Salad Snacks, and Veggie Chips Kale.

What Thallium Does to the Body

Thallium is a naturally occurring trace metal found in soil and in sulfur-based minerals. It is rare for anyone to be exposed to large amounts today; CDPH notes that the U.S. banned its old use as a rat poison back in 1972.

What makes it frightening is what it can do at high levels. In its recall notice, the company says acute or chronic exposure to thallium at relatively high levels “can result in serious adverse health effects, including gastroenteritis, damage to peripheral nerves, and alopecia (hair loss).”

California’s health department put it in plainer words in May: “Although uncommon, very high levels of thallium in foods may result in hair loss, numbness and pain in the feet and hands, gastrointestinal effects, and heart problems.”

So how does a metal get into a bag of kale? According to the company, it isn’t something the factory added. Brassica crops like kale, cabbage and radish are known to soak up certain elements from the soil they grow in. Then comes the twist that makes a healthy vegetable a concentrated one: dehydration removes about 85 to 90 percent of the kale’s water, which concentrates whatever elements were already in the fresh leaves.

The Warning That Came Six Months Early

Here is the part that should give every shopper pause. This recall is not the first anyone has heard about these chips.

California went public on May 19. CDPH told consumers to avoid Brad’s Plant Based kale products and to throw them away or return them for a refund, and urged retailers to stop selling them. Los Angeles County’s health department repeated the warning days later. The products were distributed from Pennsylvania and labeled with ingredients listed as “Product of Mexico,” so the state said it was working with the FDA and Pennsylvania officials.

And in that same May statement, California said the manufacturer had been asked to voluntarily recall the products and, “to date, has refused to remove these products from the marketplace.”

The recall finally came on Nov. 2, nearly six months later and ten months after the first inquiry. The company says it acted after the FDA advised it of thallium in tested products.

Check Your Pantry: The Recalled Bags

The recalled chips were shipped nationwide through the distributors KeHE and United Natural Foods, Inc. (UNFI) between October and December 2025, and sold directly to five individual customers. Because they are shelf-stable, some carry Best By dates into 2027. All are bags sold under the Brad’s Plant Based name:

• Brad’s Crunchy Kale, Original, 2 oz (57g), UPC 813104021679. Lots 33525-1, 33525-2 and 33525-3 (Best By Feb. 1, 2027), Lot 34525-1 (Best By Feb. 11, 2027) and Lot 35125-2 (Best By Feb. 17, 2027)
• Brad’s Crunchy Kale, Cheeze It Up, 2 oz (57g), UPC 813104021877. Lot 35025-3 (Best By Feb. 16, 2027)
• Brad’s Crunchy Kale, Radical Ranch, 2 oz (57g), UPC 813104020726. Lot 29425-1 (Best By Dec. 21, 2026)
• Brad’s Veggie Chips Kale, 3 oz (85g), UPC 854615002054. Lots 33225-3 (Best By Jan. 28, 2027), 33325-2 (Best By Jan. 29, 2027), 33425-1 (Best By Jan. 30, 2027) and 33525-1 (Best By Feb. 1, 2027)

What to do: stop eating the chips and throw them away. Anyone who thinks they may have had health effects from eating them should contact a health care provider. Questions go to Snack Right Super Foods by email at alexandra@thesnackright.com, Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Eastern Time.

There is one more catch. Back in May, California told shoppers they could return the products for a refund. The company’s recall notice says the opposite: “Refunds are not being offered, and the product should not be returned to the place of purchase.”

It Has Happened Before

If this story sounds familiar to California’s health investigators, there is a reason.

In 2022, the department was notified about a family with young children who were having neurological symptoms and had elevated thallium in their urine. Environmental testing of their home turned up nothing unusual. But a survey of the family’s diet showed they ate large amounts of one brand of organic kale chips, which CDPH did not name. Three separate samples of that brand all contained elevated thallium.

When the family stopped eating the chips, the department says, their thallium levels went down and their symptoms improved.

CDPH has also warned that there is a bigger gap underneath all of this: because toxicology data on thallium is so thin, state and federal food regulators “do not know what an acceptable food standard or safety threshold should be.”

Which leaves shoppers with a strange lesson from a snack built on the promise of being good for you. Sometimes the problem isn’t what was added. It’s what was already in the ground.