Strawberries are full of bugs, disgusting microscopic videos are showing

Strange but true

by Ben Coast

March 29, 2023 | 1:40 p.m

As if these foods weren’t “dirty” enough.

Strawberries may seem like clean eating, but a medium-ripe specimen can contain a bug bonanza. Fruit lovers stumble across an alarming video on Twitter that showed juicy red fruit teeming with microscopic creatures of biblical plague proportions.

“Having a good day today? I’m sorry to spoil her by posting this video of a strawberry under a microscope,” reads the caption on the clip, which It has more than 2.5 million views on the platform.

The ensuing awful footage, set to ominous music, shows a scientist shaving off a slice of strawberry and putting it under a microscope. The camera then switches to the magnifier’s eye view, which shows small multicolored moth-like creatures roaming the surface.

The video caused frustration among viewers One awful commenter writing“That’s why you wash your food!”

“You ruined my summer alone” said another.

This follows a trend of related TikTok videos that have popped up over the pandemic. I watched app users dunk strawberries in salt water – and then expressed their shock when tiny worms emerged from the fruit like something from the “monsters in me”.

says Celeste Radcliffe, a TikTok user, in one clip while throwing a can of strawberries into a bowl of salted water. “Look at that, look at that,” she says, zooming in on the suddenly moving spots on the otherwise healthy-looking strawberry.

As it turns out, the strawberry colonist is actually a Spotted wing Drofsila, a “tiny” invasive fruit fly that likes to lay its eggs under the skin of strawberries and other berries. These become larvae and crawl out of the skin like a creepy crawly pinata.

Despite reproductive means that motivate them to reproduce, scientists reassure berry lovers that they have nothing to fear. daily health. For example, Iowa State entomologist Don Lewis said, “The caterpillars will be at a distance of one-fiftieth of an inch—not visible to the naked eye.” Even if we could spot them, he said, grocery store fruits are unlikely to harbor them because they are refrigerator kills.

In fact, the only guaranteed way to see the creatures is to leave this unnatural treat at room temperature for one to two weeks – at which point the flies will grow to one-sixteenth of an inch. But by then, the berries will have become rotten and inedible anyway, according to Lewis.

More importantly, there is no evidence that it is harmful to eat this parasitic fruit, which is an integral part of eating field-grown food. “The reality is that most stored fruits and grains have some level of insect infestation that is impossible to get rid of,” Srika Lahiri, an entomologist at the University of Florida, tells SELF. Tell USA TODAY in 2020.

As such, experts advise against giving strawberries treated with brine—a pest detection method commonly used by commercial fruit growers—because this has the potential to make the berries taste immeasurably worse than a few insects.

Insects aren’t the only ubiquitous food.

Last month, scientists shared that grocery store bread could well contain traces of human hair, duck feathers, cow horns, and pig bristles.