Acceptable Food Contamination

U.S.D.A. (or is it FDA when its approaching medicine?)
Acceptable “defect levels” of foods. “You are what you eat”. You just can't make this up!

Asparagus – 10% infested with beetle eggs; 40 thrips or 5 insects in 100-gram samples
Chocolate – up to 60 insect fragments in 100-gram sample
Coffee beans – up to 10% insect infested, damaged, or molded
Fish – 5% of fillets or fish with “definite decomposition” over 25% of the area, or 20% with “slight decomposition” over 25% of area (“awww…it’s all just slight”)
Hops – average of 2,500 aphids per 100 grams (free protein in the beer)
Pepper – 1% insect infested; 1 mil. of excreta per pound
Popcorn – one rodent pellet or hair per 6 10-oz samples, 20 gnawed grains per lb. or 5% by weight
Spinach – 50 aphids, thrips, mites or 8 leaf miners in 100-gram sample
Strawberries – mold count of 55% in half the samples
Tomato paste (added to pizza & sauces) – in 100 gram samples: 30 fly eggs, or 15 eggs and one larvae (that’s a maggot!), or two larvae, or mold count averaging 40% (only 30% in pizza sauce) “Make that pepperoni, sweet peppers, and two maggots”

Food in name only: mushrooms - contain nothing but phosphorous which eats six times its weight in calcium - so take calcium tablets with mushrooms or just avoid: they’re grown in vats of cow manure in the dark, that can’t be too healthy - plus it’s a fungus, like Athlete’s foot or Jungle rot! Forget wild mushrooms, many have died painfully who gathered “edible wild mushrooms” – why take the chance? Fungus is not a food group!

Toxic food: nutmeg, anything burnt (carbon monoxide) – both are non-biodegradable, cause liver damage, and accumulate in the body. Charred hot dogs or marshmallows on a stick are not advised, and many have died who used green Oleander branches, which leeches poisonous juices into the meat, and into desert water! Know your plants, or get planted yourself! Oleander and foxglove, or digitalis, are two common poisonous plants in many yards.