Rodent & Insect Filth: What Is Really In Food [Infographic]

Do you know what is really in food? Well, not all food of course, but in a lot of it – the answer is rodent and insect filth. This only applies to the United States. I don’t know what the standards are for other countries. This kind of falls into the category of “I don’t really want to know.” The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has a long, complex policy about “Food Defect Action Levels” which describes the levels of natural or unavoidable defects in foods that present no health hazards for humans which are allowed in foods. This is all described on the FDA website.

Infogr8 took all the complicated terminology off the government website and compiled into a simple infographic for us all. The bottom line is…Yup, we are eating some pretty disgusting stuff in our chocolate, popcorn, canned citrus fruit juices, peanut butter and more. When you started to wonder what is really in food, did it ever occur to you that it could be rodent hairs and insect fragments? I mean, when I think about what is really in food, I think more of dust and dirt, not evidence of rats and bugs.

In all honesty, I can live with the insect fragments. We will all most likely have to eat insects in the future when our population becomes too large to keep eating as luxuriously as we do now. Some people already eat insects now. You can see that in Cupcakes Made With Insects and The Art of Eating Bugs.

However, I can’t really think about the rodent hairs or I might puke. If there are rodent hairs in food, that means there were actual rodents close by, or in the food, in order for the hairs to be in there. Ugh… So, next time you wonder what is really in food, and if you live in the United States, just know that the answer is rodent hairs, rodent pellets, fly eggs, maggots, and more juicy tastiness. According to this infographic called There’s What In That?, we eat up to two pounds of insects per year without knowing it. And, grasshoppers are kinda good for us actually. Hmm…