Yes, you CAN have your peanut butter and some roaches, too! In the United States, it’s legal to get served a little extra protein in your PB&J. Even vegetarians get a little extra meat, whether they want it or not.
Here are some of the FDA’s regulations regarding acceptable levels of insect parts in food. Most of these regulations were made for “aesthetic” purposes only:
Peanut butter: You can have up to 30 insect parts or 1 rodent hair per 100 grams.
Chocolate: If you want that Hershey bar, go for it, and get yourself up to 60 insect fragments or a big, fat rodent hair in every 100 grams.
Canned fruit juice: Have yourself a nice glass of orange juice—with up to one maggot for FREE!
Cornmeal: If you want to go whole-hog, may we suggest some cornmeal? You can get up to one whole insect per 50 grams and up to 1 piece of rodent doo doo per 50 grams (on average) and be juuuust fine. Tamales and hushpuppies for everyone!
Fish: Because we like oozy things, we’d love to see the stuff we’re allowed to eat on fish. With red fish and ocean perch, we can have copepods “accompanied by pus pockets,” and for blue fin and other freshwater herring, we can have up to 60 parasitic cysts per 100 fish.
Hops: How about a beer? With an average of more than 2,500 aphids allowed in every 10 grams of hops, you’re getting more than you paid for!
Mushrooms: If you like maggots, then you’ll love canned mushrooms. You can have 20 or more whole maggots per 100 grams.
Popcorn: a paradise for rat poop, you can have 1 poo pellet per subsample.
Check our facts (and more allowable food content!):
By Roar. Illustrated by Caitlin Atteberry, a graphic designer based in San Francisco, CA. Her non-poop-related work can be found at caitlinatteberry.com and her sometimes-poop-related tweets can be found on Twitter @attegrrrl.
[…] Even us vegetarians may be getting a healthy dose of aphids, maggots and rat poo (is that veg?) in our food. BuzzHootRoar brings some humor just in time for the holidays, examining the FDA rules on just what is allowed in our food to pass inspection. Check it out! […]
That is just gross!