Does Your Coffee Have Ground up Cockroaches? An Expert Clears up the Widespread Internet Rumor

Coffee, peanut butter, raisins, juice, chocolate, spices – everything you eat has contaminants lingering in it. In a report published last year, CNN revealed that while you eat these foods, you may be unknowingly swallowing some unpalatable creatures. Not just these creatures, but also their poop. Sadly, this is the by-product of the manufacturing process. The factoid may make you blow up in anger and disgust, but you are not overreacting, because these aren’t mere rumors. A biologist shared a story about his coffee-addicted friend with NPR. It may not be true all the time, but your favorite morning coffee may have mouse hairs or even cockroach antennas.

Where did the rumor stem from?

In a 2009 interview with NPR, Douglas Emlen, a biologist and professor now at the University of Montana, was speaking about his research on dung beetles. A conversation came up when he shared an episode about his colleague who was fiercely addicted to coffee. This guy would travel as long as 45 minutes just to grab a cup of “whole bean, freshly ground coffee.” He only drank this particular type of coffee, and due to the fear of cockroaches, he wasted a lot of travel time to feed his addiction every couple of hours.

The biologist shared that, although he wasn’t sure, he believed that the coffee people buy from the stores might contain traces of cockroaches. His friend, who had been teaching entomology, the science of bugs, for years, was suspicious of the coffee he drank. Everything, after all, could have been invaded by these tiny insects. Now, you may not actually spot a bug’s leg or tentacles, or antenna peppered in your coffee jar or chocolate bar. But even if you do, it is, unfortunately, quite normal, according to the US Food & Drug Administration (FDA).

Bugs in food are quite 'normal'

According to the FDA, these creatures in your foods are actually called “food defects.” In many of the packaged foods, these defects are unavoidable. The agency said that “it is impractical to 'grow, harvest, or process raw products that are totally free of non-hazardous, naturally occurring, unavoidable defects.” While these foods are prepared and mass-produced in the manufacturing facility, it is next to impossible to prevent these creatures from crawling inside the tins and the tubs of these foods. Not just these bugs and their fragments, many of these packaged foods are also laced with the bug poop. No matter how revolting this feels, the FDA says this is true.

Are there roaches in your coffee? 

And although there is no solid evidence that these bugs like to share your morning cup of java, it likely got infested with them in the manufacturing facility. Bugs love to crawl inside huge piles of coffee beans and settle there to feed, rest, and reproduce. By the time the beans are crushed and ground into the boxes you purchase, there are only carcasses, dead bones, and teensy hairs of the bugs left to contaminate the powder. 

Your coffee could have zero bugs, too!

And it is always possible that your coffee is entirely free of bugs, as Reddit user u/FantasticDeparture4 said. “I was head roaster at a small coffee company for 4 years and never once saw a cockroach.” So go ahead and make your favorite dope-fixer cup of coffee. Better still, if you can shift your mindset to a bit of positive thinking. You may like to see this unavoidable reality as “extra protein,” as Reddit users love to say.

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