Some Maggots With That Beer?

Whoa! Talk about scary.

The sauerkraut on your hot dog may average up to 50 thrips. And when washing down those tiny, slender, winged bugs with a sip of beer, you might consider that just 10 grams of hops could have as many as 2,500 plant lice. Yum.

Or not. But some perspective helps:

1. Ten thousand years ago, people were eating food in a considerably more "natural" state than we are now.

2. Millions and millions of people have grown up eating peanut butter and then consumed oceans of beer as adults, and 99.99999% of us survived. (Yes, I am sensitive to the fact that eight [nine?] people have died recently from eating contaminated peanut products. My point is that those tragedies were the exception rather than the norm.) (And yes, the company president who took the fifth the other day at the hearings is the Asshole of the Decade.)

3. All those thrips, maggots, and mites; rot, mold, and "mammalian excreta," no doubt bolster our immune systems. Think of all those "additives," in other words, as "organic" supplements.