16 Foods With Scary Surprises
You Are What You Eat
Ask any person how many insect fragments or rodent hairs he or she considers acceptable in their food and you will probably get the same answer: Zero. Ask the Food and Drug Administration, however, and you’ll get an answer that may change how you view the processed food industry in this country.
Tomatoes
No fewer than 15 tomato products made it onto the FDA’s list, and none of them were fresh. Mold is a recurring theme in most canned and powdered applications of the fruit (yes, tomatoes are technically fruits), with acceptable levels of mold contamination going as low as 15% in canned tomatoes to as high as 45% for that french fry favorite, ketchup.
Much more disturbing, though, is the presence of the Drosophila fly, its eggs, and its maggots in tomato products. And yes, we said maggots. The FDA allows up to 30 fly eggs per every 100 grams of tomato paste, pizza or other sauces, or up to two maggots per every 100 grams of tomato juice.