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You would then become sidetracked and further learn that approximately four rodent hairs are allowed in a jar of peanut butter, that an average of 60 thrips are allowed in 100 grams of frozen broccoli, that 10 grams of hops are allowed to contain 2,500 aphids and that 5 milligrams of rat excreta in a pound of sesame seeds is A-OK with the FDA.

What you would not learn is why the FDA might put a limit on insects' heads and not other parts of their anatomy, what rat excreta tastes like and what sort of person takes a job that entails searching for insect heads in fig cookie innards. To find these things out, you would have to pay a visit to one of the FDA's regional filth labs. You would, but now you don't have to because I'm doing it for you.

Mary Roach Mary Roach's column appears in Salon Health & Body every other Friday. + Biography + Archives

I have arranged to meet with an entomologist named Dana Ludwig, who works in the FDA's Alameda, Calif., Filth Lab, which analyzes thousands of samples of foods, most imported from the Pacific Rim, each year. In a moment of social ineptitude, I have asked Ludwig if the ludwig is a relative of the earwig. Straight off the bat, I have my foot in my mouth. I should be used to having feet in my mouth, for humans are eating insect parts all the time without knowing it.

According to an Ohio State University Extension fact sheet, most Americans unintentionally swallow 1 to 2 pounds of insects and insect pieces each year. Insects are very lightweight. If you think about how many of them it would take to make 2 pounds (and I advise you not to), you will begin to appreciate the somewhat shocking dimensions of our entomophagous intake.

The Alameda Filth Lab employs several analytical entomologists. Ludwig refers to them collectively as "filth people." Just inside the lab doorway, we stop to go over our clothing with a lint roller. A sign on the wall says, "Pet-Hair Free Zone." Ludwig is looking at my shirt. The look says that there's a name for me too, somewhere in the neighborhood of "filth person."

"There's a lot of hair on your shirt," says Ludwig as nicely as she can. The problem turns out to be my pet angora sweater. Ludwig covers me up with a lab coat. If my sweater were to shed into a food sample, some hapless Third World manufacturer might be cited for an infestation of lavender angora rabbits.

For demonstration purposes, Ludwig has set aside a bag of imported black bean wafers. Earlier in the morning, she measured out a sample of the wafers and put them in a beaker with boiling hydrochloric acid. Two hours later, the acid has digested the black bean wafer ingredients, leaving nothing solid behind but "the filth." Ludwig sieves the liquid to isolate the filth, which looks but probably does not taste like a teaspoon of melted coffee ice cream. She then scrapes it onto a "filth plate," which she slides under her microscope.

Ludwig shows me the head of a book louse, a mite fragment, a confused flour beetle underwing fragment, assorted hairs and an ant head. The magnified ant head is beautiful, a fragment of translucent amber, like what's left on your tongue in the morning when you fall asleep with a Ricola in your mouth. I ask Ludwig why there are so many more heads than bodies. I am trying to imagine the scenario that would result in an ant's head winding up in the flour sack while the rest of its body continues along its merry way. I am one confused flour beetle.

Next page | I saw glass vials of teeny tiny sample turds