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“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.

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#1

30 Facts About Food People Regret Learning 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.

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#2

30 Facts About Food People Regret Learning 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.

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4 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I mean...I'm guessing there are more than enough preservatives stuffed into those hot dogs that the long storage/standing time won't make them any less edible than they were.

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#3

30 Facts About Food People Regret Learning 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)

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"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.

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#4

30 Facts About Food People Regret Learning 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.

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#5

30 Facts About Food People Regret Learning 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.

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4 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I know this from the movie "The Bucket List", starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman

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#6

30 Facts About Food People Regret Learning 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

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4 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Botulism. It's called botulism. So don't give your young children honey. Also - no alcohol.

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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

30 Facts About Food People Regret Learning Casu marzu. There exists a cheese that contains live maggot larvae on purpose.

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4 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I always wonder what goes through peoples minds before they eat something like this. Do they just think, ooh I wonder if maggot cheese tastes good, or I wonder if I can make coffee from an animals excrements etc.

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#8

30 Facts About Food People Regret Learning 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.

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#9

30 Facts About Food People Regret Learning Grocery stores will sometimes mix in food colouring in with near expiration date meat to make it look fresh

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#10

30 Facts About Food People Regret Learning 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.

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#11

30 Facts About Food People Regret Learning They use shellac to make some different foods and candies more shiny. Shellac is an excretion from the lac beetle.

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4 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

This is based on outdated information. Lac beetle products in food are rare. Caranuba wax is the most common "shiny" coating. Modern shellac is synthetic 99% of the time.

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#12

30 Facts About Food People Regret Learning Canned pineapple can pack in up to 20% moldy fruit.

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4 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Still, it's more sustainable to buy pineappe canned than whole fruits. If you chop the top of a pineapple off and put it on the ground, it will grow again. That takes much less fertilizer and water than growing it from seeds. That's what is done if the fruit goes directly to canning.

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#13

30 Facts About Food People Regret Learning 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."

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4 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

What's special about that? When you grow the stuff yourself, you probably have more insects in them.

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#14

30 Facts About Food People Regret Learning Some raspberry flavorings come from beaver anal glands.

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4 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Who...figured that out. Who in history smelled and tasted beaver a**s and said "tastes like raspberries."

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#15

30 Facts About Food People Regret Learning Shrimps diet consists mainly of poop. If you've ever eaten shrimp, you've eaten poop from potentially thousands of different animals including humans.

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4 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

We eat poop all the bloody time without knowing, whether it is from fruits, veg, peanut butter etc. You cannot escape it, so you just have to get used to the idea.

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#16

30 Facts About Food People Regret Learning 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.

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#17

30 Facts About Food People Regret Learning The contents in a jar of peanut butter contains on average 2 bugs.

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4 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Wrong. It may contain up to that amount according to hygiene standards. That doesn't mean it does.

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#18

30 Facts About Food People Regret Learning Uni is just sea urchin gonads.

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#19

30 Facts About Food People Regret Learning 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.

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4 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Long live European regulations that makes this nonsense impossible.

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#20

30 Facts About Food People Regret Learning Lemons have the highest fecal content of any food found in most restaurant kitchens.

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#21

30 Facts About Food People Regret Learning Frozen broccoli must have an average of no more than 60 aphids or thrips or mites per 100 grams.

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#22

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.

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#23

30 Facts About Food People Regret Learning chocolate bars have an average of 8 insect legs in it.

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4 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

And they use these legs to escape. I know for sure because all my chocolate bars always magically disappear.

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#24

30 Facts About Food People Regret Learning Oregano can legally contain up to 1,250 insect fragments per 10 grams.

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4 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

And what is the size of those insect fragments? If you're going to microscopic level, every single piece of food is contaminated in one way or another.

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#25

30 Facts About Food People Regret Learning Tomato paste is considered bad only if more than 45 percent contains mold.

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4 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I am sorry but if it contains just one tid bit of mould, it is going in the bin.

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#26

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

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4 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

That's extremely low. If you grow your own cherries, you'll often end up with 100% containing maggots. And most likely you'll need to eat some of them until you notice.

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#27

30 Facts About Food People Regret Learning Figs have dead wasps inside them.

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#28

Berries can harbor up to 4 larvae per 100 grams.

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4 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

And yet, we live. That's not cinnamon BTW, that's cassia bark.

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#29

30 Facts About Food People Regret Learning Cinnamon can carry up to 1 milligram of animal excrement per pound.

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#30

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

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4 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I've been psyching myself up over eating bugs one day (most likely cricket flour). I tell myself things like shrimp and crab are seabugs, and they are pretty good.

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