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

We've all had this experience at one point or another, right? You're eating a delicious snack, and out of nowhere, someone tells you about how the FDA allows a certain amount of insect parts, rodent hairs, and foreign matter in our food. Hearing this made me stop eating peanut butter for two years. I couldn't do it.

Now that we're adults, we've kind of just accepted this fact; we try not to think about it too much.

I'm sorry for asking a question that I'm sure will ruin your appetite, but here goes: 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.

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 are in chocolate? I hate to tell you it’s cockroach parts.

Other Foods

The source says the pasta you eat in North Dakota and throughout the country can have 225 insect parts per 225 grams 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.

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 are 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!

Now let's change the subject and think happy thoughts.