![]() The “action levels” sets by the FDA are for maximum insect contamination, so you ultimately ingest less than these limits. You obviously aren’t keeling over from eating too much carapace. Anything over these limits would be aesthetically unpleasing, but it’s doing you no harm. Your shredded wheat won’t look like shredded thrips anytime soon. Like a child moving a mountain of peas around on a plate until it looks like she’s eaten more, the insect legs, bodies, and heads are less noticeable to us at the FDA’s proposed concentrations. It’s seemingly for your mental well-being. (I won’t tell you about the rat hair limits…) Fig paste can harbor up to 13 insect heads in 100 grams canned fruit juices can contain a maggot for every 250 milliliters 10 grams of hops can be the home for 2,500 aphids (pictured above).Īll of these are merely aesthetic limits. Staples like broccoli, canned tomatoes, and hops readily contain “insect fragments”–heads, thoraxes, and legs–and even whole insects. The FDA’s Defect Levels Handbook lays it all out. At least there are limits on how many bugs the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) lets you unknowingly eat. Be aware, all the hitchhikers aren’t removed. When we harvest and package our crops, a lot of bugs come along for the ride. Try as we might with insecticides and other engineered poisons, bugs crawl all over our food to feed (and procreate) on it. You’re deluding yourself if you think farming is as clean as making a microchip. But Western media still let out an audible cringe at the thought of crunching down on chitin. To most of the world, this was old news–insects are considered staples and even delicacies in many cultures. (You can read a very thorough write-up bug eating at io9and here at Scientific American.) The gist is that insects may end up solving a real food crisis by giving up their lives for human consumption. The UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization recently released a report touting the nutritional and environment benefits of eating our many-legged friends (or pests), which scuttled into all corners of the media. But while I didn’t always see them, I had been eating bugs my whole life. I immediately discarded the cereal, repulsed by the other bugs I had surely already eaten. I saw what were likely grain beetles–small food pests capable of chewing through cardboard to get at your conflakes–swimming in the bottom of the bowl, extending their legs in hopes of finding a flake–like a desperate swimmer in a flood. Well into my third bite, I knew that stale cereal wasn’t all I was eating. I poured a cup or two into a bowl, followed by a splash of milk. The flakes smelled stale, but I was hungry enough. I grabbed a box of cereal out of my cabinet. ![]()
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