What’s Really In Your Food
posted by Daniel Solove
Warning — this post will cause nausea. Don’t read on if you ever want to eat with peace of mind again. From the New York Times:
You may be grossed out, but insects and mold in our food are not new. The F.D.A. actually condones a certain percentage of “natural contaminants” in our food supply — meaning, among other things, bugs, mold, rodent hairs and maggots.
In its (falsely) reassuringly subtitled booklet “The Food Defect Action Levels: Levels of Natural or Unavoidable Defects in Foods That Present No Health Hazards for Humans,” the F.D.A.’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition establishes acceptable levels of such “defects” for a range of foods products, from allspice to peanut butter. . . .
Tomato juice, for example, may average “10 or more fly eggs per 100 grams [the equivalent of a small juice glass] or five or more fly eggs and one or more maggots.” Tomato paste and other pizza sauces are allowed a denser infestation — 30 or more fly eggs per 100 grams or 15 or more fly eggs and one or more maggots per 100 grams.
Canned mushrooms may have “over 20 or more maggots of any size per 100 grams of drained mushrooms and proportionate liquid” or “five or more maggots two millimeters or longer per 100 grams of drained mushrooms and proportionate liquid” or an “average of 75 mites” before provoking action by the F.D.A.
Think your beer is clean? Think again. “[J]ust 10 grams of hops could have as many as 2,500 plant lice.”
Here’s the most stomach-churning fact:
In case you’re curious: you’re probably ingesting one to two pounds of flies, maggots and mites each year without knowing it. . . .
The F.D.A. considers the significance of these defects to be “aesthetic” or “offensive to the senses,” which is to say, merely icky as opposed to the “mouth/tooth injury” one risks with, for example, insufficiently pitted prunes. This policy is justified on economic grounds, stating that it is “impractical to grow, harvest or process raw products that are totally free of non-hazardous, naturally occurring, unavoidable defects.”
Mmmm. Mouthwatering!
Hat tip: Boing Boing
February 13, 2009 at 5:45 pm
Posted in: Health Law
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Responses (7)
John Armstrong - February 13, 2009 at 6:37 pm
I tend to be nonplussed by these sorts of things. Ever since I can remember, my father used his spare time to plant a garden.
It sounds difficult to believe, but we actually pulled things out of the dirt where worms were crawling around. I know so because I could see them as we turned over the compost heap that turned grass clippings and vegetable trimmings into a topsoil (more dirt!) that worked better than Maryland’s native clay. And then there were the bugs that would land on and even burrow into tomatoes on the vine. And the occasional deer that meandered across the suburban landscape that might take a pit stop and leave its droppings somewhere between the spinach and the beets.
And most bizarre of all, we actually washed this stuff off and ate it!
Patrick S. O'Donnell - February 13, 2009 at 7:05 pm
I’m with John, as my wife is the green thumb in our household (indeed, a certified ‘master gardener’) and is always telling me that “dirt and a few bugs” makes me stronger (we *try* to avoid killing and eating insects as a matter of principle but…). For me, it’s a case of “out of sight, out of mind,” so as long as I see no evidence of mold, bugs, etc., it’s OK.
If you really want to get grossed out, visit a meatpacking plant (one of the exemplars of ‘agribusiness’) and view the process from start to finish. (We did not become vegetarians on account of that, however.) Indeed, “Mmmm. Mouthwatering!”
cantinflas - February 13, 2009 at 7:28 pm
The info in this post is almost as nauseating as the picture that accompanies it.
moz - February 13, 2009 at 9:58 pm
Note that “impractical” doesn’t mean “uneconomic”. It can, but it can also mean “after you pick apart the mushroom looking for maggots you don’t have a mushroom, you have rapidly rotting fragments of mushroom”. Just as potatoes oxidise quickly once the skin is cut, so do mushrooms decay. In this case (as in others), impractical means “you can sell it, or you can check it for maggots, but not both.
As a vegetarian who gardens, I know I eat quite a lot of insects. I think it’s better than eating the artificial toxic stew that comes with the crud you can buy from supermarkets. If you really want to scare people do a post about the allowable level of various pesticides. Or perhaps the acceptable level of human in hamburger patties… because they don’t always throw away the meat when someone loses a body part.
dave hoffman - February 13, 2009 at 10:27 pm
Reminds me of one of my favorite episodes of Northern Exposure.
Chris: Dust mites. Oh, god, they live everywhere. Clothes, drapes, lint in your belly button. Not any more. Kind of makes you think.
Maggie: What do you mean? About what?
Chris: About your cabin, about the unseen civilizations, about the parallel universe. Don’t you wonder what you wasted in there? Moms, Dads, universities, shopping malls.
Maggie: Oh Chris, they’re just bugs.
Chris: Yeah, but who knows what kind of socio-cultural structure they’ve cooked up in this microscopic melting pot.
Brett Bellmore - February 14, 2009 at 7:30 am
It is merely icky, objectively speaking, cooked maggots are nutritious, and if they’re present at these levels, you’ll never notice it. Maybe you think it would be cool to double or triple food prices to cater to your insect phobia, but the rest of us like cheap, nutritious food.
OTOH, I once opened my gum on a dime sized bone fragment in a sausage McMuffin, and THAT wasn’t merely icky, bled like a stuck pig. So the FDA is rationally recognizing an actual difference.
Burkhale - February 16, 2009 at 9:34 am
Ms. Levy misunderstood the FDA guidelines. The quantities of “defects” listed are the “action level”. For example, if you read it correctly, NO maggots are allowed in 100 grams of tomato puree – at least no whole maggots…
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