If you love eating fresh vegetables from the grocery store, the latest findings might change your mind. Martin Kaae Kristiansen is a 28-year-old biomedicine student. He has analyzed vegetables bought from the grocery store and he discovered that there are many organisms hiding in them.
No vegetable was spared, from celery to carrots and potatoes. “Using the microscope I could magnify things more than 1,000 times. The celery and leeks were by far the best place to find the bugs. In the samples I took, I found mainly dead insects, mites and aphids. Some of the dead insects were even covered in mold.”
More than that, Martin explained that this wasn’t just a coincidence. He explains that he found more than one insect on fresh vegetables. The student used a powerful microscope from Denmark’s Aalborg University.
Fresh vegetables present all sorts of organisms
“Of the living bugs I found, there was a selection of mites, midge larvae, roundworms, tardigrades, an unidentified larva and of course a lot of bacteria. I made sure to find at least two of every organism present so I could say with some confidence that it wasn’t just a one-time coincidence.”
However, this isn’t as bad as it sounds. In fact, those organisms are harmless when it comes to your health, and you can usually get rid of most of them as long as you wash your vegetables before eating them.
“Washing the vegetables helps a lot. If you cook the vegetables, the living insects should die, and if not, your stomach acid will most likely kill them. But in the end it’s all just extra protein,” explained Martin.
While the news might be disgusting for many, it doesn’t really change anything. Make sure you wash your fresh vegetables before eating them and everything should be good.