Bug bites

Q: What do beetle abdomens,
drosophila eggs, and
wasp heads have in common?
A: You eat them. More often than you think.

by Ellen Barry

In a laboratory in Los Angeles, bent over a microscope, a scientist is doing his bit for America.
This is how it goes: he gets a vat of wet pasta and a petri dish. Under a stream of warm hydrochloric acid, starch dissolves into sugar, sugar rinses away, and the grainy residue gradually loosens. Then that drains away, and the doctor is alone with his quarry.

Bug parts.

In the Los Angeles district office of the US Food and Drug Administration, and a scattering of labs across the country, government entomologists make their living peering through microscopes at insect parts in food items. They count them. They identify them. They give them the full forensic treatment. And every now and then, they have rare moments of glory: the Los Angeles FDA has identified two new species of mites and four new species of beetles while inspecting food products for insect parts.

You've got to hand it to the feds. As if it weren't enough work to manage some 6000 nuclear warheads, 75 million acres of public parks, and 5.3 trillion dollars in public debt, that crazy government of ours also takes the time to count the number of -- to take just one salient example -- wasp heads in our fig paste. If that count matches or exceeds the government-appointed cutoff number, known in the business as a "defect action level" (DAL), then the load of fig paste is, as they say in the business, "worthless." If that count is lower than the defect-action-level number, mazel tov. That number, by the way -- for 100 grams of fig paste -- is 13.

First, accept this: there are bugs in your food. The government has known it for a long time. And fig paste is only the beginning.

Feeling parched? Here's some thirst-quenching news about tomato juice: 100 grams of juice are federally sanctioned to contain as many as two drosophila maggots -- or, alternatively, one drosophila maggot and five drosophila eggs. Or, in another scenario, 10 drosophila eggs and no maggots.

Want some tasty cornbread? Fifty grams (about two cups) of cornmeal can legally contain as much as one whole insect and as many as 25 fragments of "insect filth," such as insect body parts or eggs. It can also contain two rodent hairs, or one "rodent excreta fragment." Not both.

All of these extraneous morsels fall into the category of "unavoidable filth"; they're too small to remove easily during processing, in amounts too small to hurt you, except in a purely psychological sense. Still, psychology can be a potent thing, and the statistics are enough to make you pause before your plate; next time you complain about a fly in your soup, consider that your soup was part fly to begin with. Defect action levels demonstrate a principle that many Americans have trouble accepting: nothing in the world -- not the supermarket, not the shopping bag, not your own kitchen table -- is entirely clean.

"Of course, it would be nice to have nothing on our food," says Fergus Clydesdale, head of the food-science department at UMass/Amherst. "But that's life. As long as we have life on the planet, there's going to be something there."

FACED WITH these creepy statistics, certain enthusiasts will tell you that insect parts are actually pretty good for you. Arthropod exoskeletons, for instance, contain a large amount of chitin, which is sometimes marketed in health-food stores as a dietary aid, since it binds with fat and makes it indigestible. Insects are also high in protein and rich in B vitamins, especially when they are served dried.

Plus, in many cultures -- someone will inevitably point out -- bugs are a great delicacy. Louis Sorkin, an entomologist at the Museum of Natural History in New York, says Americans are particularly hung up on this issue.

"Around the world, many people consume insects," says Sorkin, who last year hosted an all-insect banquet. "There are certain glandular secretions that might make the food more flavorful. Large grubs cooked are tasty."

Well, right. But for those of us who habitually avoid consuming bugs, it's hard to get away from the cold, hard reality of the irreducible minimum. There's a price you pay for getting to know your food on a microbial level. Are you the kind of person who is bored by dry toast? One hundred grams of apple butter could contain as much as five "whole or equivalent insects not counting mites, aphids, thrips, or scale insects" (italics mine), as well as up to four rodent hairs.

Lost your taste for apple butter? The irreducible minimum for mold in black-currant jam is a whopping 75 percent, according to the Howard mold-count method, which means that 75 percent of microscopic fields examined have mold present. Peanut butter, that sticky staple of American childhood, can contain up to 30 insect fragments, one rodent hair, and 25 milligrams of "water insoluble inorganic residue" per 100 grams.

Spices, too, tend to have a meaningful arthropod component. Do you feel entirely comfortable with cinnamon? Cinnamon can legally contain as many as 400 insect fragments, as well as 11 or more rodent hairs, per 50 grams. Ground paprika can average as many as 75 insect fragments and a maximum of 11 rodent hairs per 25 grams. And that ground nutmeg you're sprinkling on your lattè can contain 100 or more insect fragments, as well as one rodent hair, per 10 grams. You want some traditional marinara sauce with that? Every 10 grams of ground oregano can contain as many as 1250 insect fragments. That's 125 insect fragments in every gram of oregano. Mmm, spicy.

WHAT EXACTLY does this mean for the average eater of pasta? Not much, according to the FDA. In cataloguing permissible amounts of extraneous material in food items, the FDA classifies their significance as "aesthetic," or "offensive to the senses," although occasional large items, like olive pits, can result in tooth or mouth injury. Mold or decomposition can also prove a legitimate health hazard, but the FDA's message, in general, is clear: the odd rodent hair or insect part will not hurt you.

Ultimately, DAL levels are set by the market. When the FDA was ordered to come up with unavoidable-filth guidelines, in 1972, it embarked on a massive statistical survey of the products available in American supermarkets. Based on analysis of the level of infestation in 1500 food samples, the FDA set the defect action levels at the 97th percentile. In other words, the standard for unavoidable filth was set according to the reality of unavoidable filth.

"Admittedly, it's an arbitrary number," says John Gecan, head of the microanalytical branch of the FDA. "But you have to draw the line somewhere."

And that line continues to set the standard for sanitation in food storage. Reducing the levels of unavoidable filth would strike a blow to the market and drive food prices through the roof -- or, as FDA spokesman Herman Janiger puts it, "If you want it scrupulously free of any contaminants, your dinner table is going to be free of this product." Because food purity, like any kind of hygiene, can reach a point of diminishing returns.

"To feed our population you need these very large warehouses, and the idea of making them absolutely rodent-proof" is impractical, says Fergus Clydesdale, head of the food-science department at UMass/Amherst. "It would take the kind of technology we use in spacecraft."

Short of those measures, foods that are grown in fields are simply bound to contain field insects. And the expectation of total purity is sheer denial on the part of the supermarket consumer, who typically doesn't think too hard about where food comes from, Gecan says.

"I've had people call me and ask, `Do you really allow this stuff in food?' Well, the data supports it," he says. "And it depends where you come from. If you were a farm girl, you weren't going to be bothered by a few insects. Now a modern-day homemaker, who's never seen buggy flour, she's probably going to be totally outraged."

AND ANYWAY, for most scientists, bug parts fade into insignificance beside the threat of microbacteria like cyclospora, salmonella, and E. coli, all present dangers on the consumer market. Robert Beck, a professor of food science at Framingham State College, warns of supermarket meat counters that sell meat "as long as it's not moving under its own power," where the FDA would embargo meat in the morning and find it back on the shelves at night. Frequently, products that seem clean -- prepackaged salads are an example -- could be teeming with pathogenic microbes, and consumers don't wash their produce anywhere near thoroughly enough.

"You have to have the idea that everything is dirty, and wash it," Beck says. "Bugs may be the least of your problems."

But bugs are the things that bother us. So defect action levels and similar tiny-bug statistics raise a touchy question for the microbiologist: if it doesn't hurt the public, and the public can't see it, why is it important for the public to know? Dust mites -- the most celebrated microscopic insect of the season -- are a case in point. The fact is, we shed skin scales constantly, and dust mites eat skin scales, and there may be 10 million of them living in your bed. Dust-mite excrement can cause asthma. But although mattress companies have bounded onto the dust-mite bandwagon, experiments have shown that even brand-new mattresses grow dust-mite colonies within four months. The best defense against dust mites is approximately the same as the traditional approach to dirt: wash your sheets frequently, in hot water.

So when they tell the world what they see through their microscopes, entomologists such as Bill Robinson have to brace themselves for a surge of public anxiety. That's what happened with dust-mite research, anyway. The fact is, the world is crawling with tiny bugs. It always has been.

"You can't do anything about them. They're everywhere," says Robinson, a professor of urban entomology at Virginia Tech. "You can't say [consumers are] better off not knowing," he says, but he adds, "I'd hate to get people all upset about something they can't do anything about."

Such, anyway, is the case with the bits of antenna and exoskeleton that we ingest, unknowingly, every day. And will continue to ingest.

Want a brew? Hops can legally contain as many as 2500 aphids per 10 grams without being pulled from the shelves. And chocolate, creamy and delicious, can contain up to 60 insect fragments and one rodent hair per 100 grams. Coffee can legally contain up to "one live insect in each of two or more immediate containers, or one dead insect in each of three or more immediate containers, or three live or dead insects in one immediate container." The insects are there, but we can't see them, and if we could see them, we couldn't take them out anyway. We lose our power to control the environment on the microscopic level.

But at least we know that right now, somewhere, John Gecan's army is out counting. There is something vaguely touching about the doctor who spends his days isolating moth-fly antennae from macaroni in the service of his country. It shows a willingness to shoot for the hygienic ideal. It shows a nice attention to detail.

"The USDA can't just say `Well, make the ketchup, try to keep the bugs out,' " Robinson explains. "It would be worse if they just threw up their hands. As it is, they say, `This is what we can do. We've tried.' "

Ellen Barry can be reached at ebarry[a]phx.com