Is it safe to eat food that a fly has landed on? The scientific community points out that, in practice, the risk of getting sick because of this is relatively low. However, it is still disgusting, especially considering that flies have to vomit in the food before ingesting it.
Because it doesn’t have teeth, the fly only follows a liquid diet, so it releases its gastric juices on top of the food to liquefy it. The insect can also taste food as soon as it lands, and it uses receptors on its feet to decide if it’s taking in something nutritious. By rubbing yourself, it’s like cleaning the taste sensors to better understand the food you’ve landed on.
But that’s not the main problem: the fly spends most of its life feeding on decaying organic material, which includes rotting vegetation, raw meat and feces. This means that it harbors a host of germs.
flies bring germs
To get an idea, a study has already managed to identify 130 pathogens in this insect (among them, fungi, viruses, parasites and bacteria), which can cause conditions such as food poisoning, vomiting, nausea, stomach pain, diarrhea and fever.
A 2022 study revealed that the fly can carry foodborne pathogens that affect human health, including Salmonella, Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus, Bacillus cereus, and Bacillus subtilis.
Even so, the researchers claim that if a single fly has a brief contact with freshly cooked food, there is no need to worry, nor should you throw away the food. The real risk is in the food where many flies, at the same time, were landing for hours, for example. Or else if a female has deposited eggs in the food, as ingestion of them can cause a disease called myiasis. In these two cases, the recommendation is to discard the food.
Source: PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases via IFL Science
