Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


“Slithering green pincer-headed little monsters” or a culinary delight? This photograph from Man Eating Bugs by Peter Menzel and Faith D’Aluisio (Ten Speed Press, 1998) shows zaza-mushi, larvae of aquatic caddis flies, retrieved from Japan’s Tenryu River. Cooked in soy sauce and sugar, zaza-mushi is a delicacy in some rural Japanese towns. Meanwhile, back in the United States, we have our own epicuriosities:

Total retail dollar sales of potato chips in 1997: $5.2 billion

Percent of calories that Americans get from fat: 34

Pounds of chocolate consumed per capita, per year: 11.7

Average number of insect fragments the FDA allows to be present in a 100-gram sample of chocolate: 90

Average number of insect fragments the FDA allows to be present in a 100-gram sample of peanut butter: 30

Percent of adult Americans who always or usually use mayonnaise or mayonnaise-type salad dressing on their sandwiches: 57

Percent of analyzed fruit and vegetable samples (fresh and processed together) found to contain at least one pesticide residue per sample: 71.8

BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And the essential ingredient that makes all this possible? Readers like you.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to devote the time and resources to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And the essential ingredient that makes all this possible? Readers like you.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to devote the time and resources to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate