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Daily Mirror
Daily Mirror
Danielle Kate Wroe

Gross reason figs aren't suitable for vegetarians will put you off them forever

Figs are a healthy and delicious fruit, so a good snack choice for everyone, right? Wrong.

It turns out that they aren't actually suitable for vegetarians - and the reason might put you off them for life.

It turns out that figs contain insects. And they're actually not technically a fruit - they're a flower.

When wasps pollinate figs, they can often get stuck inside - permanently.

Edible figs always have at least one dead female wasp stuck inside, which isn't good news for people trying to avoid meat.

Even meat eaters will most likely turn their nose up at the thought of eating an insect inside a fig!

Wasps are inside figs - yikes! (Stock Image) (Getty Images)

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You won't find a whole wasp in the fig though - when a female wasp dies inside a fig, an enzyme in the fruit breaks down her carcass into protein.

The fig basically eats the wasp, and makes it into part of the fruit - yuck! Isn't nature strange?

Farmers actually buy bags of wasps in order to control the number of wasps each plant can eat.

Here are some more disgusting food facts which may stop you from trusting food forever:

We don't know about you, but that's made some of our favourite foods seem a lot less appetising.

So, in short, if you've eaten figs and ketchup, you have almost definitely eaten both wasps and fruit flies.

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