Yucky crawlies in my lettuce?

Yes, this is very true. Pretty sure government regs even allow x amount of insect parts per y amount of food, it’s unavoidable. I seem to remember reading somewhere especially with figs, so if you loved Fig Newtons as a kid, and I did, you ate a fair amount of insect parts along the way. Good times!

I also seem to remember hearing that exoskeleton small critters are generally safer to consume, either by accident or on purpose, than soft-body small critters, for what that’s worth.

How about four slugs? :stuck_out_tongue:

The tiny fig wasps that pollinate some kinds of figs are dissolved and absorbed by the fig, so you aren’t actually chomping on bugs when you eat Fig Newtons (the crunchy part is seeds).

If you eat common figs from trees grown in colder climates (like the ones I grow), there’s no need for insect pollination and no fig wasps around.

Half guilty. I don’t gag at the thought of bugs - I just try to adhere to safe food practices because of rat lungworm.

However, I have a long history of consuming raw fish and steak tartare, both of which I like. When I lived in Mozambique, I ate steak tartare. While pregnant.

That was before I read a book about anthrax in Africa. Now I can’t believe how stupid I was.

That’s why fresh-picked leafy produce needs to be thoroughly washed in SALTY water.

Or better/worse yet, half a slug?

It’s a little icky, but vermin crawling on produce is a fact of farming. Someone has to wash the vermin off, whether it’s the farmer, the produce worker, or you. If you get a head of lettuce that’s slug-free, that just means it got washed off by someone else, not that slugs never touched it. It seems unnecessary to throw out a head of lettuce because you’re the one that had to wash off the vermin.

As for rat lungworm, it looks like the only US places where it has occurred are Hawaii and Louisiana, and it’s extremely rare there. I wouldn’t worry overmuch about it even if I lived in one of those states. I’m not sure how common it is in other nations.

You might not want to hang out with these gals.

I’m surprised no one has mentioned the beneficial nutritional aspects of consuming bugs in your produce. I can’t speak to the dietary value of slugs and beetles, but other insects could be helpful menu additions.

“Consider that 100 grams of beef contain 29 grams of protein, but also 21 grams of fat. On the other hand, 100 grams of grasshopper contain 20 grams of protein and only 6 grams of fat.”

On the other hand, be aware that the FDA warns people with shellfish allergies not to eat cicadas.

Snails of a more reasonable size are rife in coastal California. I belonged to a model railroad club and after its weekly meeting on Friday evenings we’d repair to a local coffee shop for dessert or a snack. Parking was in the back and between the sidewalk to the front entrance and the building there was a grass strip about as wide as the sidewalk with bushes at the building’s corners.

Being about 10pm the strip would have hundreds of snails crawling around, grazing on it. One of our members was an avid gardener and he would detour to walk on the strip, squishing as many snails as he could in one pass. After about six months the snail herd had thinned out considerably.