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What's Really In Your Food

Daniel Solove | 14.02.2009 12:51 | Campaign against Carmel-Agrexco | Analysis | Globalisation | Health | World


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!

Daniel Solove

Comments

Hide the following 5 comments

Just asking...

14.02.2009 13:41

And? Would you rather have your food coated in cancer causing pesticides?

A few naturally causing pests in food aren't going to cause you to drop down dead, please tell me you're not one of these people that disregard a vegetable when it's the wrong shape? Organic wholesome veg is good for you.

Organic Veg Please


Tinned food

14.02.2009 14:00

Has been heated.......... fly eggs.......... good source of protien....... now go and wash you hands, again and again and again. Then crawl back into your sterilised bubble.

sorry what I meant to say was..... SO WHAT?

Bob


I'm vegan but this doesn't bother me

14.02.2009 16:47

I'm vegan but I don't think this is really a big deal. It is interesting to read though, so thanks for posting it.

Better to have natural food than fake food that has been drenched in pesticides.

Veganism is about taking all reasonable steps to avoid harming others. I don't really think it's feasible to scan every tiny piece of your food for possible insect contamination.

Also, there was a study of a vegan community in India that has no visible source of vitamin B12 yet had no signs of B12 deficiency. Eventually they worked out that their B12 was coming from insect secretions on some of the leaves they used for cooking.

I guess the message is: interfere with nature at your peril. The best of intentions (get dirt and creepy-crawlies off your food) can have unintended side-effects (wipe out essential trace minerals and vitamins from your diet).

Even water has thousands of tiny organisms in it that are invisible to the human eye.

vegan


and?

16.02.2009 09:07

So my pizza sauce has bugs in? Well, I don't eat raw pizza.

All of the stuff mentioned either gets heat reated, pasturised or something else to kill off the bugs anyway, but really, they're all fairly good sources of protien.

CW


UK

08.02.2013 13:47

Do you have any info on UK minimum levels of defects or EU ones?

DJ
mail e-mail: w1cked_dj@hotmail.com