Thursday, Mar. 20, 2003 - 9:38 am
well to clear my head i am thinking about these follow-ups i got... (first one may clear delicate tummies too so if you are queasy by nature..ignore)
remember my fear of eating a bug since i had discovered one in a canned food, and wondered what would happen if i ate other bugs unknowingly... well i got an email back (posted further below) and they tell me its OK to eat the bug! yum!
first..meet the bug- click on his picture for more of the kinds of bugs one can possibly find in foods. here are my bug's personal stats..
""Appearance
A slim beetle, 2.5-3.5 mm long, dark brown; neck shield has two deep longitudinal grooves and 6 sharply-pointed projections on each side. The slim, whitish-yellow larvae are freely mobile and grow to a length of 3.5-4 mm; the pupa lies free or between adhering food particles.
Life History
The female deposits an average of about 150 eggs loosely in the infested goods. The total development period is 3-10 weeks, depending on temperature, nutrition and moisture: the lower development boundary is approx. 65� F. In the temperate zones, the beetle can survive the winter and live to an age of about 3 years.
Distribution
World-wide.
Damage
Found in warehouses, silos, mills, food-processing plants; infests grain and grain products, flour oats, semolina, pearl barley, malt, whole meal and other vegetable stocks such as feeds and dried fruit. In granaries, it is usually found as a secondary pest together with other grain pests; is, however, occasionally found alone, as primary pest. ""
prompted by their email since i didn't have the sauce covered creature anymore, i found him/her online. i like (well not really) that i missed the big one but could have ingested the pupas- 150 of them maybe..! no i haven't given birth to any bug babies (scenes from Alien float through your head huh? :) 
) i actually liked their reply:
<< Thank you for taking the time to write... We are very sorry that your product had bugs in it! Please accept our sincerest apologies. Unfortunately, from time to time, small insects find their way into our products � they seem to be particularly fond of wheat and flour products. Please be assured that our manufacturing facilities meet with the strictest of cleanliness standards and are inspected frequently. Can you please send me the numbers from the bottom of that can? Also, if you still have the bug we would be interested in receiving him/her also. This information will be very helpful to us in our investigation into how this happened. We certainly understand that not many of us in this part of the world want to eat bugs but realistically, people in other parts of the world eat bugs all of the time. The canning process would have subjected the contents of the can to continuous high heat so the bug is really an esthetic issue and not a health issue. Also, eating the canned meals right out of the can does not pose any health issues either. Again, we are so very sorry that this happened. Thank you again for bringing this matter to our attention. We would be happy to send out a reimbursement coupon for the product that was not edible. We would be happy to send two reimbursement coupons for the canned meals that you have on your shelf also. We hope that this meets with your satisfaction. Again, please accept our apologies for this inconvenience, thank you for letting us know. It's people like you who make *'s a better company. Sincerely, Susan Consumer Relations>>> hehe- so all you *waves hand generally 'out there''* eat bugs all the time huh? you so cray-zee! this site says you eat a pound of bugs! in your lifetime....... okay i guess me too, but you know i would rather not know about it.
and on non-throwing-up-inducing-topics... paul wrote me- no i don't think he saw this entry.. but he sent a postcard - pretty much the size of this picture of him, maybe smaller- with the address in hawaii (he actually has beehives and makes honey there too!). what is nice about it is the seemingly indestructable mr theroux admits the writing of this last book was "tough"- ah yeah he got shot at, poisoned, harassed, accosted... yeah i suppose you can understate that by calling it "tough"! anyway it was nice. better than bug email any day. 
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