Is your cite ‘Lady Macbeth’s Olde Cookbooke’?
Not sweetened chocolate, baker’s chocolate. Looks just like a candy bar but has little or no sugar. You melt it and add it to the wet ingredients. Better than cocoa powder.
Several weeks ago I caught an article about supermarket food that make you go yuck. Two things stood out for me:
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Canned mushrooms can have up to three maggots in them.
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Baked goods can have all sorts of organic fillers in them, including processed HUMAN HAIR!
I think if we all knew what the US Gummint legally allows companys to put in our food we would never eat again.
Don’t blame government. It’s business that puts crap in our food, and if it were up to them there’d be no food regulations. I’m glad the government keeps what it does out of our food.
Got a link by chance? A lot of times, those “oh hey, they’re allowed to have bugs/gross stuff in your processed food” trivia bits are actually just misinterpretations of the maximum allowable “random bits of stuff” regulations by the FDA/USDA. Food is pretty much going to end up with things that aren’t necessarily what you wanted, but regulations are supposed to provide the maximum level of contamination, not an allowance to be a slacker about cleanliness. Then some article writer sensationalizes about “OMG there are bug parts in your food and the government says they can do it!!1”
yes, thanks for asking for the link - I want it too.
I doubt that mushroom cans can have 3 maggots, for instance.
P.S. I was right! It’s now up to 19 maggots!
This links to an FDA site to support it. It does list 20 maggots as a standard for mushrooms, so 19 would appear to be okay - but also says:
“It is incorrect to assume that because the FDA has an established defect action level for a food commodity, the food manufacturer need only stay just below that level. The defect levels do no represent an average of the defects that occur in any of the products–the averages are actually much lower. The levels represent limits at which FDA will regard the food product “adulterated”; and subject to enforcement action under Section 402(a)(3) of the Food, Drug, and Cosmetics Act.”
And, of course, “unprocessed” food can contain even more disgusting bugs and dirt and stuff.
While your cite is true with regard to mushrooms, it is still guilty of a hysterical level of recreational outrage when it perpetuates the “ground up bugs” exaggeration for the use of carmine red dye:
The ground up bugs are well processed to extract the pigment, but that doesn’t make for riveting copy in a blog.
That’s silly, unprocessed organic foods don’t have disgusting stuff in them. Excuse me while I prepare a nice healthy salad, with absolutely nothing unusual in it at all.
There is also outrage over the fact that strawberry roll-ups** contain no strawberry!!**:eek:
Well, the fact is they are mostly made from pear, as are many fruit products.
I haven’t read the thread. I’m just responding to the claim in the article:
I don’t know what sad, drearly place the writer of that article calls home, but all of the salmon I buy here in the Pacific Northwest is wild-caught. Sure I could buy farmed salmon, I suppose; but why?
It’s also foolish to think things are going to be 100% perfect. Every percentage closer to 100 gets more and more expensive; 99% uncontaminated is MUCH more difficult to achieve than 98%, and 100% is insanely difficult even if possible, which isn’t always the case. It would be ridiculous for laws to require perfectly uncontaminated food, so they leave a little gap to make it possible for food producers to actually function.
On the whole, it works pretty well. Just don’t think too hard about what’s in your food and you’ll be fine. 
Well, it’s not really, as I explained.
Man what a load of ignorant factoids on that cite.
Yes. Canned Mushrooms can contain “mggots”. But there’s isn’t a dude down at the mushroom canning factory with a loupe and a pair of tweezers carefully adding maggots to every can of “processed” Mushrooms. Mushrooms naturally have tiny little insect larvae in them. These aren’t the nasty “size of a large grain of rice housefly maggots”, they are almost invisible to the naked eye harmless little guys that mushrooms naturally have. In fact- processing removes many of them. I have both grown and picked mushrooms, and yes, they have dozens of the tiny little larvae in them. The ones down at the Farmers market likely have many times than those which come canned. This is one of the biggest pieces of hypocritical disinformation the organic industry will feed you on the one hand they say that “pesticide free” is great and that the insect damage is mostly cosmetic and harmless- which it is. But on the other hand they post this drivel about “processed foods” being “allowed to have” so many insect parts, etc… while at the same time, their organic products have many many times the same insect parts & pieces which their other sites have just told you are totally natural and harmless. Man, that’s some evil nasty hypocritical lying there.
But let’s take a look at the other bullshit thatcite has:
Castoreum. Oddly, yet another completely natural and harmless ingrediens, that yes, is “allowed” to be used in certain products. But it ain’t. No one uses it anymore, the total USA usage is like a 100 pounds in some very specialized foods. Besides, don’t all us dudes want to ‘eat more beaver?”
Carmine: again, a 100% natural product.
Brain damage from processed foods? UCLA sez so?!? Say it ain;t so! And- it ain’t so. Yes, we can use more Omega 3 in our diets, and a few vitamins- such as Iron, Zinc, Folate, B6, C, Flavonols etc. But many processed foods have those added to them, and hell, chocolate is a great sources of flavonols. And yes, trans fats are bad. But the study does not say anything bad about “processed foods’ just “junk food” that has high levels of saturated fat and sucrose.
Metal detectors? Yep. Cows all too often swallow bits of baling wire. So?
Animal feed in the USA does not contain ground up pet dogs & cats. A complete lie and fabrication, not even backed by a cite.
Yeah, Pacific Northwest, not sad or dreary, always sunshiny.
Well, yeah, anyone can think back on whether they’ve ever found even a single visible maggot in their mushrooms and figure out that there aren’t 19 in every can. It’s more paranoid lunacy.
Again, can we PLEASE dispense with the “pink slime” nonsense too? People?
Thanks for fighting the <MY> ignorance on this one. The article I saw was a yahoo Shine article; which should have told me it was laced with bullshit.
If you think about it, most veggies are grown in nasty fertilized dirty dirt, so a few critters are going to come along for a ride, and there’s not a lot that can be done about that other than washing, cooking (processing.)
Probably best to take the advice of whoever said it a few post back: don’t think about it too much.
Plus this is about human health. Maggots may be disgusting, but they won’t hurt you if you eat them. They’ve a little dash of extra protein.
The perception that many people have about these government agencies as regulatory ‘watch-dogs’ is not the way it actually works in practice.
The FDA and Dept of Agriculture work with manufacturers and processors to develop guidelines. The relationship is one of cooperation rather that adversity. Guidelines like GMP (Good Manufacturing Practices) GRAS (Generally Regarded As Safe) are developed and modified as things change.
In my 30 years in animal feed production I never once had a surprise inspection. The FDA and USDA inpectors were the same person and he always called ahead to make sure I would be on hand for the inspection. “How does next Tueday work for you?” So I would just make sure the plant wasn’t doing anything questionable that day. Making medicated feed today?, nope, just the plain stuff.
Procedures would be examined and the inspector might have a recomendation to add a step or more documentation. I would then re-write our procedures and he would document the change. He had done his job and could move on, and the manufacturer had cooperated. After several years of this the FDA inspector brought a group of trainees along to look at my feed program as an example of what a good one should look like.
These governement agencies act to facilitate food and feed production and, in my experience, do not behave like a cop serving a warrant looking for something wrong.
So if you are of the mindset that ‘Thank God they are looking out for us!’ you would be really disappointed if you understood that the actual practice is to help the industry/manufacturer succeed.
They are facilitators, and sometimes regulators.
I too, am surprised that the mafia is engaged in unscrupulous business.
I hear that store bought huitlacoche is allowed to contain fungus!
Very true, albeit…yuck. Although the grasshoppers from Mexico are delicious!
I will never again be able to used canned mushrooms and not think of this. In much the same way as I will never be able to swim in the ocean and not think of Jaws. Thanks loads, Speilberg!