With Thanksgiving just around the corner, we thought we’d do a little research into the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s regulations on our favorite holiday foods. We wish we hadn’t.
Franck Boston / Shutterstock.com
Because of the way foods are mass harvested, factory processed and packaged in the States, the FDA has to allow food companies to include a certain number of “defects” in the final products. The term “defects,” we learned, is code for the inclusion of “foreign matter” in canned and packaged foods, including insects, insect parts, rodent hairs, larvae, rodent poop, mammal poop, bone material, mold, rust, and cigarette butts. These “defects” are not dangerous in the quantities they’re allowed, the FDA says, but still: what was that about ignorance and bliss?
Here’s a taste of what you can expect to find on the table this Thanksgiving. Bon appétit!
Canned mushrooms can include more than 20 maggots “of any size” and 75 mites, per 100 grams. Same goes for 15 grams of dried mushrooms. No more than 10% of your mushrooms can be “decomposed.”
For every 100 grams of ground cinnamon, it’s OK to include 400 or more insect fragments (legs, heads, wings, thoraxes, etc.), and 22 or more rodent hairs—a substance the FDA charmingly refers to as “rodent filth.”
Brussels sprouts can include 30 or more tiny insects, called aphids, per every 100 grams of veggie.
Up to 60 percent of frozen berries can be moldy, with an average of 4 or more larvae, or 10 or more whole insects, per 500 grams. To give you an idea of what that means for you: most pie recipes call for about 550 grams (5 cups) of berries.
The FDA says it’s OK if 15 percent of a can of cranberry sauce is moldy.
Apple butter is allowed to be 12 percent moldy. For every 100 grams of apple butter, it’s OK to have four or more rodent hairs and an average of 5 or more “whole or equivalent” insects. The average serving size of apple butter is about 30 grams, so no worries: you’re only ingesting a little more than 1 rodent hair and 1.6 insects per serving!
Spreading Your Wyngz
From TIME:
“The USDA’s Food and Safety Inspection Service allows the use of the term ‘wyngz’ to denote a product that is in ‘the shape of a wing or a bite-sized appetizer type product’ but that contains no wing meat but only under certain conditions. These conditions include the stipulation that the poultry used is white chicken (with or without skin) and that ‘a prominent, conspicuous, and legible descriptive name (e.g., ‘contains no wing meat’) is placed in close proximity to the descriptive name and linked to ‘wyngz’ by use of an asterisk.”
The turkey meat in turkey burgers, turkey dogs, turkey patties and nuggets has been “mechanically separated” from the bone. That’s code for: an entire turkey, bones and all, has been forced through a sieve under high pressure, oozing—to quote the FDA—a “paste-like and batter-like poultry product” on the other side. That “paste-like” poultry product contains a high percentage of “ground, crushed and pulverized bones,” evident in high levels of calcium, which is cool with the FDA.
Meat of all sorts—ground beef, chicken nuggets, taco filling, etc.—must include at least 35 percent actual meat. The other 65 percent doesn’t have to be meat, and can be made up of any mixture of edible fillers and chemicals, including cornstarch, water, soy, maltodextrin, silicon dioxide, food colorings and artificial flavoring.
Tomato paste, pizza sauce or other sauces can include 30 or more fly eggs per 100 grams. Alternatively, you can have 15 or more fly eggs and one or more maggots, OR two or more maggots, but not all of the above.
Cocoa beans can be 4 percent moldy or insect infested, but only 6 percent moldy and insect infested. More than 10 milligrams of “mammalian excreta” is permitted per pound of cocoa beans.
In 100 grams of corn meal—that’s roughly the amount required by your average corn bread recipe—the FDA says it’s OK to have two or more “whole insects,” 100 or more insect fragments, and either 4 rodent hairs or 2 or more chunks of rodent poop. Yum!
More from mental_floss…
Where Are They Now? Diseases That Killed You in Oregon Trail
*
Pizza for Reading: Pizza Hut’s Book It! Program
*
The Best and Worst Political Campaign Songs (But Mostly the Worst)
*
WTF? Initials That Meant More Than They Realized
*
17 Vowel-Free Words Acceptable in Words With Friends
Comments (30)
Comment
- subscribe /
- give a gift /
- terms of service /
- about /
- contact us /
- write for us /
- ad info /
- subscriber services /
- press /
- privacy policy /
- rss /
© 2012 Mental Floss Inc. All Rights Reserved. Mental Floss is a registered trademark owned by Felix Dennis. mentalfloss.com is a trademark owned by Felix Dennis.
Disclaimer: All submissions made to mental_floss become the property of Mental Floss Inc and may be used without further permission by the submitter and without compensation to the submitter. If you do not agree to these terms, please do not submit anything to mental_floss.
I always knew chocolate had bits of insects in it but had no idea about all these other foods containing poop and then some! blech!
posted by Pink Coat on 11-1-2011 at 11:01 am
My high school history teacher’s dad worked for the FDA when they first started purity regulations. When we studied this time period, he brought in an original guidebook. Needless to say, after hearing about what constituted “pure food”, no one ate lunch that day.
posted by Lucas on 11-1-2011 at 11:28 am
I think people don’t understand how hard it would be to produce food that doesn’t have anything but pure food in it. There are millions of insects, there are millions of rodents. I guess if this makes people uneasy, maybe they should try and produce all of their food themselves. That should give them somewhat of a wakeup call. I have worked on a cattle ranch and a horse ranch, there is no way in the world that food produced naturally can be kept immaculate.
posted by Denise on 11-1-2011 at 11:39 am
Honestly, the thought of eating insect parts and animal bones doesn’t really faze me all that much. The other stuff though…
posted by Bert on 11-1-2011 at 11:45 am
About the paragraph on turkey meat, chickens are the same way. After the breast, wings, leg, thighs and tenders are cut off, the carcass goes through a machine that takes off the rest of the meat and the result is a paste like substance. Next time you eat a hot dog, if it has “chicken” in it, that’s where it cam from.
posted by indotexan on 11-1-2011 at 11:55 am
My first job was at Glister-Mary Lee where they had a large room full of giant shifters that made sure any “fragments” were ground so tiny that you would never see them in your cake mix.
posted by Becky on 11-1-2011 at 11:56 am
my only question is “why do you feel the need to tell me these things”. I am perfectly happy with my ignorance regarding this particular topic.
posted by Darin on 11-1-2011 at 12:01 pm
This doesn’t bother me so much–have you seen what is allowed into a vat of pickling cucumbers?
:D
posted by Heather on 11-1-2011 at 12:54 pm
i used to get freaked out by these things – then realized that i was happily and ignorantly eating all of this stuff for years. It’s always been in our food- knowing about it doesn’t make it any less easy to avoid. Pass the rodent filth! Yum!
posted by Jen on 11-1-2011 at 1:02 pm
Ha, so next time don’t look at me funny when I say everyone should kill, prepare, and eat their own food at least once. At least you know exactly what is in there.
posted by Jov on 11-1-2011 at 1:09 pm
The OU, the largest kosher inspection agency, reported in the mid-90s the finding that when a product newly goes under their supervision, sales jump in the south (the US Bible Belt) more than in New York and other areas with more dense observant Jewish populations.
Their theory was that this reflects the number of people who are just happier buying food that was subject to third-party inspection, regardless of what the OU’s specific interest happens to be.
It may not be a large percentage of the non-Jewish population, but the number of observant American Jews is only 8% of the 2% of the US that is Jewish. If the number is more than one person in 625…
posted by micha on 11-1-2011 at 1:23 pm
I notice little thin black fibres in my apple sauce cups, but put it down to generic fruit fibres, while teasing my children that they were legs. I guess they really are legs. Yum.
posted by Marion on 11-1-2011 at 2:01 pm
Twelve comments in and not a single animal rights/locavore/factory farming activist is chiming in about how this is proof of how horrible our society is- impressive!
And here I was hoping to point out that traditionally grown food probably has numbers just as bad as these are.
posted by Joman on 11-1-2011 at 2:24 pm
When I was in High School I read “The Jungle” by Upton Sinclair. Really good book and I highly recommend it. But it took me a while before I ate hot dogs again!
posted by Bailey on 11-1-2011 at 2:30 pm
@Jov
I grow a lot of my own vegetables and hunt and fish. My food is probably dirtier and more parasite/insect infested than anything I buy in the store. But at least they are natural insects/parasites!
posted by Brian on 11-1-2011 at 2:43 pm
Just think of all that added protein, calcium and other nutrients! :)
posted by H on 11-1-2011 at 3:04 pm
This is why I love mental_floss and the commenters!
I now feel a tad less paranoid about the errant cat hair that may get into something I bake in my own kitchen. I’ve for sure eaten worse!
posted by Drea on 11-1-2011 at 3:11 pm
Having worked one farm growing up, we always thought that the best way to cure obesity was for people to work in the food preperation industry. Knowing what goes into your food normally tempers one desire to eat it. Speaking of which, and I’ve said this before, I’ve got to stop reading this web site when I’m having lunch!
posted by DaveP on 11-1-2011 at 3:37 pm
I always wondered what “mechanically separated” meant. That’ll be the last time I ever eat a Slim Jim, lol.
posted by Joe in PA on 11-1-2011 at 4:28 pm
I just threw up a little bit in my mouth.
posted by MG on 11-1-2011 at 5:47 pm
I teach high school U.S. History, and I have my kids read _The Jungle_ every year (at Christmas break, no less!) and I have always wanted this information. I was SO EXCITED when I saw the tweet about this article. Thank you, mental_floss, for helping me ruin my students’ lives!
posted by hillary on 11-1-2011 at 6:47 pm
Having worked in a grocery store, I am still freaked out when I find something wriggling in a package. I once found a whole shipment of plastic bag-wrapped rice crawling with insects. They didn’t show up until you picked up the package and woke them from their rice-filled slumber!
posted by Tim on 11-1-2011 at 8:19 pm
I thought I’d be grossed out, but I’m not – this stuff is tasty. It’s kind of like that rumor that Chinese food is really cat – if that’s the case, I think cat is delicious! You eat it, you like it, you’re still alive, who cares?
If you think about it – this is what the FDA allows, but if the companies actually let 15 maggots in or 60 percent moldy berries by being careless, we’d hear about it and no one would buy the products. I think that these companies try to stay as far away from the FDA line as possible.
posted by Clevegal42 on 11-1-2011 at 9:09 pm
Apparently, the author should actually try to understand what an Action Level is before writing about it. Mainly, that a product contaminated by an average number of something or MORE is considered unacceptable for distribution. The article is written in such a way as if it is permissible to exceed this number, which is it not. Also, if you notice most of the Action Levels are set, not for safety, but for aesthetic reasons. So, if this grosses you out, because it is not pretty, then you are pretty wimpy.
Oh yeah don’t confuse the USDA with the FDA.
posted by Dagger on 11-2-2011 at 1:28 am
Your home made kitchen food is going to be worse though. What’s different is not the cleanliness level (well it kind of is, they are likely cleaner) but the increased detection ability.
–did you know that at this moment you are covered in thousands and thousands of bugs?
It’s true. I almost guarantee it. They’re called skin mites. It’s been that way your whole life. And so has everyone else.
–Did you know your poop is alive?
It’s true poop is 80% bacteria by weight. Beneficial bacteria and without them you’d be very ill.
–Statistically the air you are breathing right now came from an animal’s ass. Probably at least several times.
Most of them were some sort of sea creature or dinosaur. We live in a closed loop environment called a “planet”. It’s been running for a long time now.
GET OVER IT!
posted by bombastinator on 11-2-2011 at 10:36 am
Considering that there are estimated 10 quintillion insects on Earth, the US food purity regulations seem pretty strict.
Anyone who expects perfectly pure anything, has an expectation that is not only impractical and unnecessary, but in most regards physically impossible.
Food purity regulations are based on a standard of ‘reasonable certainty of no harm.”
That is what is truly ‘allowed’ by federal regulators. Nowhere does that say insect parts are OK.
As legalese goes, that phrase is pretty easy to parse:
Reasonable — Appropriate, logical, ordinary
Certainty — Absolute confidence.
Harm — Damage of any kind.
So, by law, food makers are required to only sell food that they are absolutely sure will, in the normal course of events, not damage anyone who eats it.
That’s what is ‘allowed.’
The regulations are just real-world limits set, to be safe, several pegs below a rate of what can reasonably be in food for which there is an absolute certainty it will cause no harm to the people eating it.
posted by Ego Nemo on 11-2-2011 at 1:06 pm
Godammit. These scary FDA facts aren’t ever supposed to apply to vegetarians like me. You always hear about samonella in beef, or chicken, or whatever. But bugs ground up with my cinnamon? Look, I know accidents happen, but this just doesn’t seem FAIR…
Also, for the record, I’ve found an entire dried moth that got thrown in with my dried mushrooms from an Asian food market. Although, somehow I get the impression that their shop standards differ from ours…
posted by Araxie on 11-4-2011 at 2:49 am
Can you please point to the FDA link or details about these policies from a credible source – particularly around the rodent filth and maggots? I certainly believe this article could be 100% true, but there is no source even directly referenced.
posted by Ken on 11-4-2011 at 6:15 pm
Several ago, I read an article about what the allowable amount of rodent hair, droppings, etc was allowed in peanut butter. Put me off it for quite awhile. I got over it eventually, in fact, I just ate a peanut butter sandwich about an hour ago. Been eating it for years and it hasn’t killed me. I realize there is probably a lot of stuff in my food I don’t even know about, and I think I prefer it the way.
posted by Carole on 11-9-2011 at 5:04 pm
Ken asked for the FDA Link:
http://www.fda.gov/food/guidancecomplianceregulatoryinformation/guidancedocuments/sanitation/ucm056174.htm#intro
Here is another source:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/26/fda-approved-rat-hairs-an_n_773608.html#s165326&title=Pizza_Sauce_30
posted by kat on 11-16-2011 at 12:01 pm