Are There Really Little Bugs in Your Strawberries?

Is this for real?

Have we been unknowingly enjoying larvae in our triple-berry parfaits?

Should we justnever eat fruit again?

I talked to some experts to find out.

Heres the short answer: thisisa real thing that can happen, but its not common.

And neither the food safety experts nor the bug experts advise washing your fruit in salt water.

What is actually happening in this video?

She helps berry farmers with pest management at North Carolina State University.

But there are probably bugs insomestrawberries.

You know fruit flies, right?

Those little tiny guys that show up around overripe fruit youve left on your counter too long?

Theyre oftenDrosophila melanogasterorDrosophila simulans, Burrack says, if not one of their relatives.

The eggs hatch into itty-bitty larvaeaka maggotswhich look exactly like the worms in the TikTok video.

Eventually the larvae grow bigger and turn into flies, and the circle of life repeats.

MEANING THESE BUGS ARE LIKELY IN ALL BERRIES!

But Burrack tells me that theres no way to know whether the larvae in the video areD.

suzukii, since allDrosophilalarvae look alike.

And since growers and wholesalers do their best to keepD.

The idea they are lurking within your berries may be unappetizing, but theyre not going to hurt you.

Natural protein,tweetedfood safety specialist Courtney Crist when I asked about it.

If youre eating berries I would assume you have probably eaten these at one point, says entomologistJoe Ballenger.

A valid point.

But since you brought it up: This is nothing new.

Plant bugs inject their saliva into leaves and then suck out the resulting slurry.

You have probably eaten a lot of plant bug spit.

Which mean the worms are still there, theyre just dead.

I could go on, but I wont.

Suffice it to say, youve probably eaten a lot of things youd rather not think about.

Or as Ballenger puts it: If you look too closely at it, pretty much anything is gross.

A regular rinse is fine.

Burrack points out that you should keep your berries in the fridge.

This makes them last longer and it keeps them away from the fruit flies buzzing around your counter.

All theclassic strawberry-keeping advicestill applies, the other biggie being tonotwash your berries until youre ready to eat them.

Washing can damage the berries slightly, creating opportunities for mold and microbes to get under the skin.