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Daily Mirror
Daily Mirror
Science
Jack Mobley & Shivali Best

The creepy crawlies hiding in YOUR food - including mites and roundworms

A biomedicine student used a microscope to discover what lies on the surface of our fresh food.

Forget bedbugs - 28-year-old biomedicine student Martin Kaae Kristiansen decided to discover what creepy crawlies could be lurking in the meals we eat as well.

Using a powerful microscope at Denmark's Aalborg University, Martin discovered a whole world of organisms hiding in fresh vegetables he bought from a regular grocery store.

From carrots and potatoes to celery and leeks, his microscope showed nothing was safe from insect infestation - with mites, aphids, roundworms, midges and larvae lurking in the vegetables.

Mites (Caters News Agency)

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Martin said: "Using the microscope I could magnify things more than 1,000 times.

"The celery and leeks were by far the best place to find the bugs.

"In the samples I took, I found mainly dead insects, mites and aphids. Some of the dead insects were even covered in mould.

The researchers used a powerful microscope to snap the insects (Caters News Agency)

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"Of the living bugs I found, there was a selection of mites, midge larvae, roundworms, tardigrades, an unidentified larva and of course a lot of bacteria.

"I made sure to find at least two of every organism present so I could say with some confidence that it wasn't just a one-time coincidence."

For those of you put off from eating vegetables ever again out of fear of what insects you may be chomping on, Martin did offer up some preparation techniques.

They found mites, midge larvae, roundworms, tardigrades, an unidentified larva and lots of bacteria (Caters News Agency)
Martin Kaae Kristiansen (Caters News Agency)

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He said: "Washing the vegetables helps a lot.

"If you cook the vegetables, the living insects should die, and if not, your stomach acid will most likely kill them.

"But in the end it's all just extra protein."

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