By: Benjamin He

I’ll put it bluntly: we eat a lot of bugs, whether it’s intentional or not.

Sure, maybe we aren’t consuming that many bugs every day, but that amount adds up over time.

An example? Take pop star Taylor Swift.

In a moment last weekend during her Eras Tour, she was onstage, when suddenly, in an unchoreographed, unplanned, unbidden moment, she dissolved into a coughing fit.

After the coughing died down, she informed the audience that she “swallowed a bug.”

She reassured her fans that she was fine before revealing embarrassment. This happens to everyone a lot, whether it be a pop sensation or a mere human being.

“Bugs are everywhere,” says Jerome Grant, an entomology professor at the University of Tennessee. “They’re part of our lives. They’re not going anywhere, and we’re not going anywhere, so we have to learn to live with them, even if it means swallowing them sometimes.”

Although some people might take the very concept of consuming bugs as disgusting, most of what we swallow is totally harmless. Some may have allergic reactions to some bugs, like cockroaches or the scales on moths, but even allergies require large quantities of swallowed bugs to trigger a reaction.

As for people without those allergies? Well, not much. “Just a little extra protein.” Grant says.

There’s that common myth where people inhale a lot of bugs while asleep, which is also implausible. Grant believes that that process would wake people up.

The common myth that says people eat 1-2 pounds of insects a year repeated in multiple news outlets is implausible, figures Grant. Your normal average bug weighs 2.5 to 3 milligrams, he figures, meaning that to reach that two pounds, you would have to consume more than 300,000 insects annually, even assuming the bugs were on the larger side. Unless it’s on purpose, you aren’t going to eat 800 bugs, give or take, a day.

However, plenty of people do eat bugs with our food or as food, intentionally or not.

Besides eating bugs, there’s also the issue of inhaling bugs. That happens more rarely, and unlike eating them accidentally, you typically know if you’ve swallowed a bug or not. Grant says that he thinks he’s probably swallowed bugs maybe two or three times this year.

So how is the whole bug thing allowed? How do bugs get in our food not against some sort of hygiene rule?

As it turns out, in one of the government’s more disgusting handbooks, the FDA’s “Food Defect Levels Handbook,” it details exactly how many bugs, rat hair, cigarette butts, etc., can get into any type of food and the amount of it. For example, it’s okay to have one whole insect or 25 insect fragments in every 50 grams, or about a quarter of a cup. Citrus juices are allowed five fly eggs or one maggot per cup.

Besides eating bugs, there’s also the issue of inhaling bugs. That happens more rarely, and unlike eating them accidentally, you typically know if you’ve swallowed a bug or not. Grant says that he thinks he’s probably swallowed bugs maybe two or three times this year.

Being outdoors or places where lights attract them, like, say, a baseball stadium, tends to increase the odds of inhaling bugs.

The best way to tackle it if a bug flew into your mouth? Take after Swift. “She didn’t overreact,” says Grant. “She made a joke and even turned it into something positive for her fans.”