Imagine that you a feeling a little peckish and decide to have a nice healthy piece of fruit. You grab a banana, but notice something is odd. Something appears to be moving inside the banana peel! You grab the smart phone tucked in your back pocket and start filming and see this crawling out of your banana. It's enough to give anyone the heebie jeebies and possibly swear off bananas for the rest of your life.
**We recommend you watch the video below before continuing to read the following article**
Well, luckily for everyone who was as grossed out by this video as I was, it is actually a very well done fake. Kaleb Lechowski, a CGI expert in Berlin masterfully crafted this footage using a real banana, a chopstick (which was later removed from the footage), and a spider he created in Blender, a 3D graphics and animation program. An entire community of people who are used to nearly sterilized grocery market foods can breath a sigh of relief.
If, however, you want to regain that icky feeling you got the first time you watched the video, here is a short (e.i. not comprehensive) list of bugs that the FDA allows into everyday foods found in markets all over the United States: Aphids in many frozen vegetables; maggots in canned tomatoes, tomato sauces and canned mushrooms (20 maggots per 3.5oz of canned mushrooms!); fruit flies and fruit fly eggs in canned juices and raisins. Many people who have already made the switch to local organic foods have become more comfortable with the idea of an occasional bug, but anyone still squeamish about the idea of insects should know that processed and treated does not mean insect free.
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