HOW MUCH DIRT WILL YOU EAT IN YOUR LIFETIME?

Over the course of your life, you willprobably eat several pounds of dirt! It may sound like a lot, but stretched out over seventy or eighty years, it's not that much, although you could grow a nice potted plant in it. So what's the nutritional value of dirt? When it's on the surface of the Earth it's called soil and is highly nutritive to the plants growing in it. We, however, are not plants. When soil is on your skin or in your food, it's called dirt and is of no nutritional value, not even for its mineral content. Common dirt isn't bad for you, but you maybe surprised to learn about some other unsavory things found in your food.

The Food and Drug (bug) Administration allows certin amounts of dirt and other "foreign matter" to be present in foods; for instance, they allow one or more whle insects or fifty insect fragments, two or more rodant hairs, and one or more rodant excreta in every fifty grams of cornmeal. Three percent of canned peaches can be moldy or wormy. Twenty or more maggots are allowed in one hundred grams of canned mushrooms. This may sound disgusting, but bugs and worms won't hurt you and they are a good source of protein! Many of these beasties are killed durning processing. It's one thing to eat a dead worm you can't see but another to eat the live critter.