On the popular platform, people posted videos of themselves by dipping strawberries in salt water for 30 minutes to see if the bugs come out.
If knowing the bugs in the berries made you lose your appetite, you are not alone. But the truth of the matter, some experts say, is that these bugs are harmless and most likely exist on all your favorite fruits and vegetables.
“If you are eating fresh produce, you are eating insects,” Greg Loeb, an entomologist and professor at Cornell University, told CNN. “Sometimes we entomologists joke about it, hey, it’s just a little more protein.”
You’ve eaten them before, and soaking your fruit in salted water doesn’t mean you will never swallow an insect again, Loeb, he said – and that’s fine.
“But the real point is that there are organisms on your fruits and even if that makes people uncomfortable, it certainly won’t hurt them. Eating these insects won’t make you sick.”
Most of these insects live outside the fruit and made their way to strawberries at some point on their journey from the field to the local fruit stall or the grocery store aisle.
When it comes to the safest way to wash fruit and vegetables, Loeb says using water should be enough. When you eat strawberries, the only insects you ingest are the small ones you wouldn’t even notice.
So the next time you take a bite from your strawberry, try to ignore what else you might be chewing.
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