For the most part, we believe the foods we buy and consume from the grocery store and in restaurants are safe. However, that’s not always the case. In some small number of cases, otherwise innocent foods have the potential to do irreparable harm in ways that aren’t always obvious.
Just about everything we do in life can in some way lead to an early grave, including the food we eat. We’re not just talking about fast-food french fries, double triple cheeseburgers dripping with butter or 3-foot-tall desserts either. So, if you’re the type who likes to worry about what could be lurking in every bite you take, read on and find out 10 new things you should be worrying about.
1. Don’t drink the water!
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Did you know water can kill you? And no, we don’t mean drowning. You’d have to drink a lot (like fraternity rush party “a lot”), but enough water will cause your brain to mess up and your kidneys to overload. Suddenly that Coke isn’t looking so bad, is it?
2. Would you like some spider caviar to go with your bananas?
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Ask someone who has worked in the produce section before, and they’ll tell you — bananas are a natural hiding place for spiders to lay eggs. These eggs hang out, do their thing and, before you know it, hatch. Hopefully this happens far away from you, but it might happen once you’ve brought that beautiful yellow bunch of ripe fruit back to your house. What do you serve a couple dozen potentially poisonous spider guests who just show up for dinner?
3. How about lizards?
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The dark secret of every produce section in America is the sheer number of lizards that emigrate to the U.S. of A. hidden in fruit baskets. These illegal interlopers spend their days amongst food you’re going to eat raw, doing their business, oftentimes carrying diseases on their skin. So go ahead, eat up!
4. Fruit seeds: Nature’s cyanide storehouse
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Enjoy those peaches, apples, cherries, etc., all you want. No really, they’re safe. Just beware the seeds. They’re full of poison that can eventually mess you up.
5. Green leaves of death
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Do you like rhubarb? If you’re like most people, probably not. But if you do, then don’t eat the leaves. They’re poisonous.
6. Green leaves of death part II: The diseasing
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Not only will some leaves leave you feeling a little less lively, but there’s an unfortunate trend in which greens are giving rides to a whole load of nasty bugs, like salmonella. See, unfortunately a lot of greens farms are close to animal feedlots. So the water and waste from the feedlots manage to infect the greens, and the next thing you know, someone dies from eating their spinach. Which is crappy on so many levels.
7. Seriously, we use refrigerators for a reason: mold
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This doesn’t happen a lot, due to the fact that it’s so full of salt and vinegar, but have you ever wondered why it’s OK for restaurants to leave ketchup sitting out all the time? Apparently it’s not. Every so often a little mold can enter a bottle, which is just hanging out at room temperature. Then more ketchup gets poured on top of it. Still at room temp. And the mold just sits there and parties and gets bigger, until the ketchup bottle can literally blow, spraying a large area with ketchup shrapnel.
And until that happens, you’re eating that mold.
8. What you don’t know can kill you
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Did you know tomato stems carry toxins? Yeah, you’re not supposed to eat them. Sadly they don’t have a warning, and they’re attached to something you eat all the time. So unless you’re sure you can eat it, don’t eat it. Now you know…
9. Raw meat is kind of a bad idea in general
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Listen, we love sushi, tartare and carpaccio, and we’ve eaten enough of it to know it won’t kill you instantly. But we’ve heard stories.
All that raw meat does, on occasion, pick up some parasites, worms and other little guys that would love to live in your body, and suddenly you’re not eating for one. You’re eating for 1,000.
10. This last one’s hard to swallow
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As natural as the act of putting food in our mouths and chewing is, sometimes it goes wrong. Peanut butter, marshmallows, chicken bones, hot dogs and even fruit can all go into one end, get stuck in your throat, and then it’s the end.
Chew carefully, and watch what you give to your little ones!
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