10 Disgusting Food Contaminants You May Have Eaten

Copyright 2016 by Gary L. Pullman

Food-safety laws are 20th-century inventions. Before they existed, unscrupulous merchants adulterated foods with additives that were not only unappetizing, but also potentially hazardous to consumers' health. Likewise, food-processing plants were often guilty of unsanitary practices. Throughout history, grains, spices, fruits, nuts, vegetables, poultry, fish, and meats have been sources of contamination, causing sickness and death. Even today, despite laws and government watchdog organizations, the problem continues.

Here are 10 disgusting food contaminants you may have eaten.

10 Frontier Food “Additives”

Front Street, Dodge City, Kansas

For the most part, for their food, frontier families relied on crops they planted and animals they hunted. A trip to the nearest store or trading post might require several days of travel through rugged terrain in a buckboard or on a horse. Wild animals, severe weather, and other dangers were frequent risks. Money was also often in short supply for many homesteaders, farmers, and ranchers, and there was no guarantee a shopkeeper or a trader would be willing to accept items offered in trade. There was also no guarantee the food a customer bought or received in trade was safe to eat. With an eye to maximizing their profits, store owners weren't above adding inedible materials to their groceries. Flour might be “half plaster.” Cornmeal might contain “sawdust.” If a customer were lucky, “coffee might be doctored with “navy beans” or “dry-roasted peas.” If not, it might contain “small pebbles.”

9 Meat-packing Plant Contaminants

Meat-packing plant

Encouraged by a socialist magazine, The Appeal to Reason, to write a novel about the 1904 Chicago meat-packing strike, Upton Sinclair interviewed strikers and their “families, lawyers, doctors, and social workers.” He also “personally observed” day-to-day industry operations. In his novel, he described the industry's deplorable conditions. Men with tuberculosis spat blood on packing-house floors. Workers' toilets, when present, were “primitive,” providing neither soap nor water. In plants without toilets, men relieved themselves by urinating “in a corner.” Personnel consumed meals while working. To avoid meat inspectors, workers processed “diseased, rotten, and contaminated meat products” after regular hours, doctoring them with “chemicals,” before the products were “mislabeled for sale to the public.” President Theodore Roosevelt, one of millions who read Sinclair's novel, The Jungle, “appointed a special commission to investigate Chicago's slaughterhouses.” The commission's report “confirmed almost all the horrors” Sinclair had described. As a result, the Meat Inspection Act of 1906 was passed, bringing much-needed reform to the industry.

The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

8 Insect and Rodent Filth

Despite federal regulations, food continues to contain contaminants, including what the U. S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) identifies as “insect and rodent filth.” The euphemism “filth” sounds revolting enough, but the contaminants it refers to are even more disgusting. By law, makers of chocolate and chocolate liquor are allowed to include up to 60 “insect fragments” per six 100-gram “subsamples” (samples drawn from larger samples) of chocolate or 89 such parts in “any one subsample, even if the overall average of all the subsamples is less than 60.” When it comes to “rodent filth,” the companies are permitted only one “rodent hair” per six 100-gram “subsamples” of chocolate, “regardless of the size of the hairs or hair fragments,” or two hairs in “any one subsample, even if the overall average of all the subsamples is less than one hair.”

7 Molds

According to the U. S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), some molds can be hazardous to our health, causing “allergic reactions and respiratory problems.” In meat or poultry alone, we might encounter as many as 16 molds. In addition, “these molds can also be found on many other foods.” Vegetarians aren't out of danger, because mycotoxins, “poisonous substances produced by certain molds,” are “found primarily in grain and nut crops, but are also known to be on or in celery, grape juice, apples, and other produce.” They “can make you sick,” too, the USDA admits, “and scientists are continually discovering new ones.” As if this situation weren't worrisome enough, aflatoxin, “a cancer-causing poison produced by certain fungi in or on foods and feeds,” can be found “especially in field corn and peanuts.” Among other safeguards, the USDA recommends we “don't buy moldy foods.”

Moldy potato

This advice, sound as it may be, may be difficult to follow, because mold can be present in quite a few food products, including spices, apple butter and jams, fruits and vegetables (fresh, frozen, or canned), cocoa beans and green coffee beans, “corn husks for tamales,” cranberry sauce, shelled and unshelled peanuts, and tree nuts.

6 Mammal Excreta

Mammal excreta are also found in processed foods. Contaminated items may include spices, cocoa beans, and seeds. As with molds, insect and rodent filth, and other contaminants, “when . . . levels or types of defects . . . do not appear to fit the action level criteria, [the] FDA evaluates the samples and decides on a case-by-case basis” whether to take “action” against offenders or not. After all, “it is economically impractical to grow, harvest, or process raw products that are totally free of non-hazardous, naturally occurring, unavoidable defects.”

5 Parasites

Food parasites

In 2104, the World Health Organization published a “Top-Ten list” of the food-borne parasites “of greatest global concern.” The parasites cause multiple diseases, including anaphylactic shock and amoebic dysentery, and “some can live on in our bodies for decades.” The culprits are tapewroms (found in pork and fresh produce); protozoa (found in pork, beef, “game meat [red meat and organs]),” produce, fruit juices, milk, and fresh produce); pork worms; and roundworms (found in fresh produce). 

According to the FDA, parasites of one type or another can also be found in such fish as tullibees, ciscoes, inconnus, chubs, whitefish, blue fins and other fresh water herrings, and red fish and ocean perch.

4 Rot

Food rot

Rot, as defined by the FDA, is “plant tissue that is visibly decomposed, usually discolored with disagreeable odors and taste. Such a condition results from the digestion of the tissue by invading microorganisms or by such “secondary invaders” as bacteria and yeasts. “Molds are the primary organisms of decomposition.” Rot is confirmed by “the presence of mold hyphae in the tissue” and can be found in canned beets, cherries (fresh, frozen, or canned), canned plums, and potato chips.

3 Maggots

Maggots

The FDA allows companies to serve “over 20 or more maggots of any size per 100 grams of drained mushrooms and proportionate liquid” or “five or more maggots two millimeters or longer per 100 grams of drained mushrooms and proportionate liquid” or an “average of 75 mites.” The New York Times estimates “you’re probably ingesting one to two pounds of flies, maggots and mites each year without knowing it.” 

But mushrooms aren't the only foods that may contain maggots. You might find the fly larvae in brined or maraschino cherries, canned citrus fruit juices, canned tomatoes, tomato juice, tomato paste, pizza and other sauces, and tomato puree. 

2 Radiation

Radiation

If bug parts, rodent hairs, mammal droppings, parasites, plant rot, and maggots aren't our ideas of great cuisine, there's always radiation. The FDA now allows food processors to zap “unrefrigerated uncooked meat,” such as poultry, with a higher radiation level than ever before: “up to 4.5 kilorays (kGy) of radiation from the previous 3.0 (kGy).” 

In addition, the radiation can be listed as a “food additive,” by the confusing rationale that “the additive is not added to food literally, but is rather a source of radiation used to process or treat food such that, analogous to other food processing technologies, its use can affect the characteristics of the food.” Despite the increased radiation of our foods, the FDA insists that it “has previously reviewed the irradiation of meat and meat byproducts . . . and concluded that the irradiation of refrigerated meat and meat byproducts is safe,” which should, of course, make us all feel better.

1 Miscellaneous

Drosophila fly

We've covered quite a few disgusting food contaminants, but there are others. We could find shell fragments in our chocolate liquor or cocoa powder press cakes, insect eggs in our canned citrus fruit juices, stems in our cloves, sand and “grit” in our cumin seeds and natural or golden raisins), grit in our peanut butter, pits in our pitted dates and pitted or salad olives, decomposition in our eggs and egg products, mildew in our canned greens, “foreign matter” in our mace and whole black or white pepper, mites in our canned or dried mushrooms, worms (called “insect damage” in the euphemistic language of the FDA) in our peaches, and Drosophila flies in our canned tomatoes (and tomato juice, tomato paste, pizza sauce, tomato sauces, and tomato paste and puree). Foreign matter, by the way, is defined by the FDA as “objectionable matter such as sticks, stones, burlap bagging, cigarette butts, etc.,”and “includes the valueless parts of the raw plant material, such as stems.” 

Bon appétit!