It’s one of those things you never think about (or never want to think about): how much yuck gets into your food? You probably have heard the story about how the federal government (and state governments) establish rules for, say, how many cockroach legs can go into a batch of hot dogs and still be fit for consumption, or the amount of rat turds that can be reborn and resold as an unlisted ingredient in Wonder Bread.

This list, while not definitive, is interesting. Did you know, for instance, that cherry jam gets rejected if the "average mold count is 30% or more"? I imagine that doesn’t mean that up to 30% of your jar of jam can be filled with a slimy mass of myxomycophyta, but it doesn’t sound very promising, like the term "rodent filth" that pops up a lot on the list.

Cherries are apparently something to stay away from. If more than 5% of the fruits in a batch of maraschino cherries have maggots in them, they’re declared unfit. OK, great, but why do fresh cherries specifically state that rejection occurs when "4% or more pieces are rejects due to insects other than maggots"? Does this mean that any amount of maggots in fresh cherries is OK?

I think my personal gross-out favorite is for hops. I’ll bet you didn’t know that kicking back a cool Coors 16-ouncer satisfies your USDA requirement for bug juice. When you take the numbers at face value, it sure sounds vile. Consider the following:

• The rejection threshold for hops is 2,500 aphids per 10 grams of hops.
• There are 28 grams to an ounce.
• To make 10 gallons of lager, you’ll use about 6 ounces of hops. (More or less- I’m not an accomplished zymurgist, so don’t give me any grief if this number doesn’t match your recipe.)
• There are 128 grams in 6 ounces.
• 128 grams of hops can theoretically contain 41,983 aphids without being rejected.
• There are 1,280 fluid ounces in 10 gallons of lager.
• Each ounce of finished lager might therefore contain 33 aphids (41,983 ÷ 1,280 ≈ 33).
• Each 16oz. can of beer can thus contain the dissolved corpses of 528 aphids. Yum!

You know the mythical "just a couple" you tell the traffic cop or your wife? Over a thousand bugs, and that’s just the aphids. Bottoms up!