How Many Bugs Are Legally Allowed In Your North Dakota Food?

I’m sure you’ve heard this before, that the FDA allows a certain number of bugs and insect parts, rodent hairs and all kinds of foreign matter in our food.

Bleh! It’s not very comforting.

Ruining Your Appetite (Sorry)

Have you ever wondered how many bugs are legally allowed in our food in North Dakota?

Now that I think about that question, I realize this is probably something you don’t want to know, but it crossed my mind today, so I had to look it up.

According to several sources like Readers Digest, CNN and Food Safety Training and Certification, peanut butter can contain 132 insect parts before it’s considered contaminated.

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Not a big peanut butter person? What about chocolate?

The sources say the chocolate you buy and eat in North Dakota can contain WHOLE insect and insect larvae. Chocolate can contain 60 insect fragments per hundred grams.

Want to know what the most common bug parts that are in chocolate? I hate to tell you it’s cockroach parts.

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Other Foods

The source says the pasta you eat in North Dakota and throughout the country can have 225 insect parts per 225 gram of pasta. I'm bad at math, but that sounds like one bug leg per gram. Don't quote me, though. Either way, it's gross.

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I hate to break it to you if you like mushrooms, but legally, the sources say a 3.5 ounce can of mushrooms can contain 19 maggots.

There’s a bunch of other foods that allow bug parts like frozen broccoli, canned tomatoes, even fruit juice, and ground pepper.

While all of this is hard to hear, there's not much we can do about it, is there? I mean, I will probably still eat chocolate with reckless abandon, but it's better to know!