36 Gross Facts About Food That You Will Regret Learning

“You don’t want to know how the sausage is made.” The old adage is true. Trust us. Some facts about food are best left moldering in the dark, humid corner behind your kitchen cabinet. So don’t read on, dear Pandas. Don’t-- oh well. It looks like we’re not going to be able to stop you curious Pandas from checking out the true-but-disgusting food facts that the Bored Panda team has collected. They’re perfect for the spookfest that is October, just not great for your stomach.

Go on, then, scroll on down. Just remember to upvote your fave yucky and icky facts and share any other ones that you know in the comment section below. But please, promise us one thing—make sure you’re not snacking on anything as you’re reading this post!

How many bugs can legally be in your food? What’s the name of the cheese that you should steer clear of if you’re not a fan of chomping on live insects? Why is my appetite suddenly gone? The answers to these and other questions are below.

#1

I used to work in a baseball park concession stand. The short answer is not to order anything, but if you absolutely have to buy something, don't buy the hotdogs.

Do not. Buy. The hot dogs.

They made it out of the package okay, and might even have been edible after we finished grilling them - and then they went into the water. We kept three pans of water at the back of the grill, that held the hot dogs. Any hot dogs left at the end of the day went back into the fridge, and came out again the next day. Me and the other cook put our feet down on throwing out the water and old hot dogs after two full days, but the management didn't want to let us.

Oh, and our freezer broke so all the meat got stored in the ice bin. And our management always told us when the surprise health inspections were gonna show up, usually a week or so in advance.

Image credits: FreakyCheeseMan

#2

Salami isnt cooked. It is technically a raw product. In its production good bacteria is added that decreased* the ph to a point that harmful bacteria such as e. coli and listeria can't survive, which then make it safe to eat. Not to mention the cool fungus that grows on the casing to protect it from dying out too much. Very neat. (Meat Science major, we make Salami and other meat products on campus in a dinky meat lab)

Image credits: reddit

#3

Casu marzu. There exists a cheese that contains live maggot larvae on purpose.

Image credits: reddit

"It is economically impractical to grow, harvest, or process raw products that are totally free of non-hazardous, naturally occurring, unavoidable defects," explains the United States Food and Drug Administration (aka the FDA).

Translated from corporate-speak, this means that it’s not possible for food products to be completely free from bits of bugs, mold, animal hair, and other parts of the Great Outdoors. Sure, it might sound yucky, but we don’t even notice these ‘food defects’ the vast majority of the time and we’ve been swallowing them our entire lives.

However, nobody wants to be chomping down on chocolate bars that are entirely made up of insects. So the FDA has guidelines to keep icky bits of Mother Nature out of your snacks. For instance, CNN reports that the FDA allows an average of 10 milligrams of animal poop per pound of coffee. What’s more, 4 to 6% of the coffee beans are allowed to be moldy or infested by insects.

#4

Grocery stores will sometimes mix in food colouring in with near expiration date meat to make it look fresh

Image credits: n0rth3rn__

#5

Soda has a ton of acid so it counters the extremely sweet syrup. The bad thing is, your body neutralize the acidity with something basic, meaning calcium. Drinking soda takes calcium out of your bones.

Image credits: IRatherChangeMyName

#6

Tomato paste is considered bad only if more than 45 percent contains mold.

Meanwhile, peanut butter and jelly sandwich lovers should look away from this paragraph. FDA standards permit an average of one or more rodent hairs and around 30 insect fragments for every 100 grams of peanut butter. Jelly and jam aren’t controlled, unfortunately. So something like apple butter can contain an average of 4+ rodent hairs for every 100 grams and around 5 whole insects. That’s in addition to the aphids and mites.

Finally, let’s ruin raisins for you, dear Readers. Do you know those iconic kid-sized boxes? They’ve got around 4 fruit fly eggs and a whole insect in each box. We hope that we haven’t ruined your appetite forever, dear Pandas!

#7

Usually because no restaurant ever has cleaned out the ice machine. It also depends on what they use to scoop the ice out of the machines. If you got people with dirty hands with a scoop scooping out ice you can imagine all the nasty particles that rub off on the ice etc. Do that 4-5 times a day and you see the potential for nasty to accumulate.

Image credits: Beer4me:

#8

FDA regulations state that ten insects and 35 fruit fly eggs per 8 oz. of raisins is OK. It doesn't stop at raisins, though.

Image credits: CrystalCrown

#9

One of the most expensive forms of coffee is Kopi Luwak which is coffee beans that have been eaten by a Asian Palm Civet and pooped out and can run up to $700 a kilo.

Image credits: RaptureRising

#10

Worked at Subway 2010-12. Only thing I have to say is that tuna and seafood packaged used to have a label on it that said that it didn't contain dolphin or turtles in the meat, then that label suddenly disappeared in 2012.

Image credits: tigers-in-circles

#11

The contents in a jar of peanut butter contains on average 2 bugs.

Image credits: RAMI_XXL

#12

The roe and milt of certain fish is a common delicacy across the world, including sturgeon roe, otherwise known as caviar.
While roe is widely known to be fish eggs, it's not so well known that milt is fish sperm.

Image credits: godoflemmings

#13

There is always cow feces in all milk. Cows' assholes are right above the udder. Udders are cleaned before attaching the milking machines, but sh** happens all day long while cows are getting milked. Once you see a milking operation, you'll be REALLY glad to know that they literally pasteurize the shit out of that milk.

Image credits: mojave_moon

#14

Every time you eat fresh produce, you're taking the risk that no one who touched it also didn't poop in their hands. So, wash everything and enjoy your salad.

Prepackaged salads are an excellent source of bacteria. The salad gets washed once, then is sold to you.

Image credits: screenwriterjohn

#15

Lemons have the highest fecal content of any food found in most restaurant kitchens.

Image credits: bandit515

#16

Shrimps diet consists mainly of poop. If you've ever eaten shrimp, you've eaten poop from potentially thousands of different animals including humans.

Image credits: UrasnoFlake2

#17

Figs have dead wasps inside them.

Image credits: Lt_iroq_Pliskin

#18

In the United States companies can legally sell curry powder that contains less than 100 insect fragments per 25 grams

Hops with less than 2500 aphids per 10 grams and coffee as long as less than 10% of beans are moldy.

Even with modern technology, all defects in goods cannot be eliminated. As a result, the Food and Drug Administration has set allowable defect or "tolerance levels."

Image credits: PeaceofMind

#19

Some raspberry flavorings come from beaver anal glands.

Image credits: HotTamalesYum

#20

chocolate bars have an average of 8 insect legs in it.

Image credits: J4wer

#21

Apparently, If You Put Strawberries Into Salt Water, Tiny Bugs Come Out Of Them

Image credits: Krista Torres

#22

Canned pineapple can pack in up to 20% moldy fruit.

#23

Frozen broccoli must have an average of no more than 60 aphids or thrips or mites per 100 grams.

#24

Oregano can legally contain up to 1,250 insect fragments per 10 grams.

#25

Cinnamon can carry up to 1 milligram of animal excrement per pound.

#26

Berries can harbor up to 4 larvae per 100 grams.

#27

Up to 10 percent of canned asparagus can harbor asparagus beetles or egg sacs.

#28

As much as five percent of your maraschino cherries can legally contain maggots.

#29

This is the most disgusting defect in the FDA approved list! Yes, 1 kilogram of wheat may contain upto 9 rodent poop pellets. Even your favourite popcorn may contain upto 4 pellets of rodent poop. The presence of a small amount of mammalian excreta is considered to be safe for consumption.

#30

Ground turkey is just the whole bird ground up, without the guts. Feathers and feet are left on, after ground it goes through a machine that seperate bone and feather fragments. But that is not always the case.

Image credits: FiddlersB***h

#31

Uni is just sea urchin gonads.

Image credits: De-Nomolos

#32

They use shellac to make some different foods and candies more shiny. Shellac is an excretion from the lac beetle.

Image credits: ryelooan

#33

You should not feed honey to children under one years old because it contains spores of a bacterium that will produce the possibly deadliest poison known to mankind

Image credits: AlreadyRiven

#34

Blue Cheese. The blue is mold.

Image credits: Ebriate

#35

This may all be true but it's also mainly OK. People aren't dying because there are a few bug legs in their peanut butter. A varied diet (including some less than pristine elements) makes for a good, healthy gut microbiome.

#36

The traditional recipe for Mexican pozole soup dates back to pre-Columbian times. Research says there is a likelihood that human meat was one of the original ingredients.

#37

Gelatin, which is a thickening agent, can be found in frosted cereals, yogurt, candy, and some types of sour cream.

The gelatin in desserts, for instance, comes mainly from pig skin.

On a commercial scale, gelatin is made from by-products of the meat and leather industry. Recently, fish by-products have also been considered because they eliminate some of the religious obstacles surrounding gelatin consumption. Gelatin is derived from pork skins, pork, horses, and cattle bones, or split cattle hides.

#38

(Sorry I don't know how to put a picture in)
Well... Many people around the world (around 3000 ethnic groups) practice entomophagy. Even more can NOT even imagine their mouths going near any type of insect. Too bad, 'cause Americans consume about 0.23 lbs of insect a year. It doesn't sound TOO bad, really, but that 0.23 lbs consists of over half a million insect fragments. Or about 600 insect fragments per pound of food we eat. Crazy, right? And it's actually very healthy. It saves money and food, and we consume less pesticides (most food contains pesticides to keep insects away).

Also: Did you know that up to 2012 Starbucks used a red dye called carmine extracted from the cochineal beetle? They stopped because of the outrage, but carmine is still in a lot of cookies, yogurt, and artificial crab meat.

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