Red Worms All Over Breaded Green Beans

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“Found these in the Birdseye breaded green beans!” writes Susan about the tiny, maroon worms pictured below. “Yuck! Are they parasites? Concerned that my family and I have been eating these before seeing!” Yuck indeed: Susan seems to have lived many people’s worst nightmare, finding worms in their food. It reminds us of that scene from Mousehunt where someone finds a cockroach in their food. In any case, we have to tell Susan right off the bat that we will not be able to confirm or deny if these are parasites.

The reason for this is because we are not medical professionals, and parasites are always a medical concern. We are neither qualified nor legally able to identify any organism that would cause a medical situation as doing so would be tantamount to providing a medical diagnosis, which only a professional can do. What we can do is point Susan in the direction of some professionals that would be able to tell her if these are parasites, and suggest alternative identifications if these do not turn out to be parasites. When it comes to consulting medical professionals about parasites, we recommend seeing a medical parasitologist, as they specialize in the field. We have often heard from readers who consulted their primary care doctors about similar issues that they were turned away, which is often due to the fact that primary care doctors often don’t receive training in parasitology. To find a medical parasitologist, Susan do one or more of the following:
1) Search for a medical parasitologist in their area using this directory of medical parasitology consultants: https://www.astmh.org/for-astmh-members/clinical-consultants-directory.
2) Search for a local parasitologist by doing a Google search for “medical parasitologist (name of the closest big city)” or “tropical medicine specialist (name of the closest big city)”.
3) Get in touch with Dr. Omar Amin at the Parasitology Center at https://www.parasitetesting.com.
We should note that Dr. Amin is available for online consultation, so our reader does not need to be in the vicinity of his physical offices to get help!

Now, if Susan consults a medical professional and they conclude that these are not parasites, then we would say they are likely some type of insect larva that likes to eat green beans, or that likes to eat grains (because of the batter that the green beans were cooked in). That’s the only other viable explanation in our opinion. That would explain how they ended up in the food. At some stage, likely before the green beans were harvested at whatever farm they came from, an adult insect laid eggs on the green beans, and only much later did they hatch. That said, since these green beans were presumably deep-fried, eggs would not have survived that, so in that case, it is more plausible that these eggs found their way into the packaging at a much later stage (though how they did, we do not know).

In conclusion, we cannot identify the worms Susan found, given her concern that they are parasites. Regardless, she should definitely throw these out and stop eating them. Additionally, we suggest that Susan complain to Birdseye and try to get some kind of compensation. On top of that, if these worms do turn out to be parasites, she may be entitled to even better compensation. Whether or not she wants to take some other form of action against them is up to her – we are not legal advisors after all, only worm enthusiasts! We hope this helps, and we wish her, and her family, the very best!

 

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Red Worms All Over Breaded Green Beans
Article Name
Red Worms All Over Breaded Green Beans
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"Found these in the Birdseye breaded green beans!" writes Susan about the tiny, maroon worms pictured below. "Yuck! Are they parasites? Concerned that my family and I have been eating these before seeing!" Yuck indeed: Susan seems to have lived many people's worst nightmare, finding worms in their food. It reminds us of that scene from Mousehunt where someone finds a cockroach in their food. In any case, we have to tell Susan right off the bat that we will not be able to confirm or deny if these are parasites.
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Author: Worm Researcher Anton

1 thought on “Red Worms All Over Breaded Green Beans

  1. Oh my goodness, please tell me that you wrote a very strongly worded email to the creators of this product! At the very least you deserve a rebate on top of answers.
    I really hope you didn’t eat it.

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