Filth in food?

(NEWSCHANNEL 3) - Recently we've encountered a number of reasons to question what's in our food, from tainted peanut butter, to tomatoes that could make us sick. What might surprise you is that there are many things in our food that regulators say is okay to put on store shelves.

Just what could be so stomach-turning about the coffee we drink in the morning, the chocolate bar we have for a mid-day treat, or the fruit and veggies we serve at the kitchen table? Consumers that Newschannel 3 spoke with were repulsed, but curious enough to keep looking at the list of what the government calls natural and unavoidable defects in our food.

From bug parts in macaroni, to fly eggs in fruit juice, and even animal excrement in herbs and spices. All of which falls under acceptable for those who study what's in what we eat.

Newschannel 3 took the list to Michigan State University's food science labs, where they grow dangerous substances, such as e-coli, in petri dishes and then figure out how it's transferred into our food. But shouldn't they be looking at things like maggots and mold as well?

"We've been consuming these things for years," said Dr. Elliot Ryser, food science professor at MSU. "There's no correlation between the numbers of fly wings and levels of e-coli, salmonella, listeria, or anything else in the food products."

Newschannel 3 was told that there is really no way around the fact that substances most people would consider disgusting find their way into the food supply.

Some of the stuff on the list includes; an average of 20 or more maggots per 15 grams of dried mushrooms, one or more rodent hairs per 100 grams of chocolate, there's what's politely called 'rodent excreta' in cornmeal, or 300 or more insect fragments to add a little extra spice to oregano.

There are limits to how much of these substances are allowed in foods, and a lot of it is found in microscopic amounts, but can't get rid of it all.

"If the tolerance level was zero, say no rat pellets were allowed in flour, we wouldn't have any flour left to consume," said Dr. Ryser. "Obviously there's a give and take between what's acceptable to the government, what's an acceptable risk to the consumer, and what the industry can actually control."

To see the full list of what the USDA calls the food defect guide, you can do so here.