There has been an uproar online about an advertisement apparently showing bugs crawling on a popular grocery store's steaks. But it looks like these fears were overblown.
Clips across Instagram and X show people recording what appear to be pictures of bugs crawling across steaks during a Kroger advertisement section on TV.
One post on X is captioned "The large grocery store chain Kroger just put out a TV commercial and there are very clearly bugs crawling across the steaks. "How did they miss that? The entire marketing team is about to be fired."
The video attached to the post shows the steaks seemingly flying in the air as they are showcased with their prices. And, upon zooming in with the camera, it really does look like bugs are crawling on the pieces of meat.
Many people in the comments on the social media posts were quick to point out their disgust over the whole incident. One wrote, "Truth in advertising, Kroger is gross", with another writing "NOTHING should be moving across a steak—raw or cooked. Yuckkk."
Others thought it was intentional, with one user writing "This has to be sabotage fr... No way the editing team misses that."
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Other Social Media Commenters Said the Steaks Didn't Have Bugs
But other commenters seemed to do some sleuthing to find out whether there truly were bugs in the advertisement or not. Commenters pointed out that the original video had zoomed in to show the bugs. And this didn't properly show the whole picture.
If you zoom out or show the ad in its entirety, it looks like it's just bits of seasonings. And they're flying—not crawling, as the zoomed-in video made it look like.
Some commenters with editing knowledge shed some light on the situation. "Their 'editor' is reusing composite greenscreen elements [common green screen mistakes]. I've stitched 3 .@kroger ads, and the same 'bugs' are on all of them... Typical cookie-cutter editing."
However, Kroger hasn't responded to what is pretty clearly some negative press, despite the advertisement blowing up. But one thing remains clear—there definitely aren't bugs crawling across Kroger's steaks.
