The fear: Eating a bug. When I was younger, I mistook a bug in my salad for a raisin, and I almost ate it. Since then, I won’t put raisins (even though I like them) or any other food resembling a bug in my salad, because I’m scared of accidentally eating a critter. Even though I’ve probably eaten a bug at some point in my life, I’m terrified I will eat one and become deathly ill.
Reality check: Eating a bug won’t kill you (usually). According to the USDA, there are nearly 1,500 recorded species of edible insects, and probably many more that haven’t been sampled yet. There’s even the popular Eat-a-Bug Cookbook by David George Gordon (be sure to try the “Sweet and Sour Silkworm”). And in any six 100-gram samples of chocolate, the FDA allows up to an average of 60 insect fragments.