And/or the associated... um... parts.
I was starving. "I will be healthy!" I thought. "I brought raisins and by god, I will eat them!"
I had just come back home after being in Arizona for 5 months and hadn't gone food shopping yet. I only had time enough to unpack an outfit for work the next day and that morning, I ran out the door with the only thing I could find, snack-wise: an old, wayward box of stiff raisins.
I had no idea how old they were but raisins last forever, right?
Fast forward to 4pm. I waited until my stomach started to digest itself and finally relented, remembering my snack.
I tore into the box of raisins. They were dry, crumbly and unyielding (a particularly unappetizing combination in a raisin) but I mindlessly jammed giant handfuls down anyway. I downed nearly the entire box this way, not even looking.
Now down to only three raisins glued to the back of the box, I clawed blindly but they were out of reach. So I tore it open. And made the mistake of looking.
And that's when I discovered something very wrong inside.
Little segmented parts and tiny hairs.
Raisins are not segmented. And they do not have hair.
I don't know WHAT was in this box but clearly, I did not get there first.
I stood there, contemplating the philosophical cleansing of a good retching. Alas, it actually takes less effort to just shrug and accept fate so your heroine has no mighty ending worthy of such a dreadful discovery except for the untoward, additional disturbing discovery that bugs in food are not uncommon at all.
Nope, this is not the first time I've eaten bugs, nor have you, I'm sorry to say.
The FDA details the number of allowable insect parts in its Food Defect Action Level publication. Although this list contains UNallowable amounts, my brain saw this and instantly calculated the reverse: acceptable levels of grossness including insect fragments, parasitic cysts, thrips, mites, aphids, rodent hairs, mold, and worms in our food.
For example, I can see that it is not acceptable to have 50 thrips in sauerkraut, so that must mean 49 thrips are fine. Who is counting these thrips? I don't exactly know what thrips are but they sound small. What if they're so small that multiple thrips stick together, obscuring the full number and mistakenly allowing food to pass? I understand we have bigger things to worry about but THRIPS.
Unacceptable food defilement levels:
- Herring: 60 parasitic cysts
- Sauerkraut: 50 thrips
- Spinach: 50 or more aphids, thrips and/or mites
- Mushrooms: 20 or more maggots...75 mites
- Broccoli: 60 or more aphids and/or thrips and/or mites
- Brussel Sprouts: 30 or more aphids and/or thrips
- Peanut Butter: 30 or more insect fragments...One or more rodent hairs
- Wheat Flour: 75 or more insect fragments...1 or more rodent hairs
- Tomatoes: 10 or more Drosophila (fruit) fly eggs, or 5 or more fly eggs and 1 or more maggots
- Popcorn: 1 or more rodent excreta pellets...1 or more rodent hairs
- Pepper, ground: 475 or more insect fragments...2 or more rodent hairs
- Peaches, canned/frozen: 3% wormy or moldy...1 or more larvae and/or larval fragments
- Nutmeg, ground: 100 or more insect fragments...1 rodent hair
- Oregano, ground: 1,250 or more insect fragments...5 rodent hairs
- Macaroni & Noodle Products: 225 insect fragments...4.5 rodent hairs
