Rat hair, beaver anal secretions, and other surprising things in your food... The ingredients in some popular foods might startle you.

Pedro_P

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What's really in your food?
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▼ Diners in France recently got more than they bargained for when poppy seed baguettes were found to contain a dose of opiumthat could take postprandial napping to a new extreme. Other than narcotics, there are a host of surprises lurking in everyday foodstuffs that you might not be aware of. Here are some of the less palatable ones. Bon appétit.
When it comes to food, “natural” is usually a byword for “good”. But some natural products are a bit disgusting. For example, a natural flavouring called castoreum is a thick, odorous secretion obtained from the anal glands of beavers. It is used to give a vanilla flavour to some dairy products and desserts.
Towards the end of the 19th century, beavers were nearly hunted to extinction to acquire this highly desirable food additive and fragrance. Fortunately, German chemistsdiscovered that vanillin (one of the chemicals responsible for the taste of vanilla) could be extracted from the humble conifer.
Today, synthetic vanillin accounts for about 94 percent of all vanilla flavoring used in the food industry ( 37,286 tons), with natural vanilla extract accounting for most of the remaining 6 percent. Beavers can heave a sigh of relief. Their contribution to the food industry now accounts for a tiny fraction of natural vanilla flavoring and tends to be limited to luxury foods and beverages.

Luxury ice cream maker.
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Another natural ingredient that might make you retch is rennet. It traditionally came from the mucous membrane of the fourth stomach ( abomasum) of young ruminants, such as calves, lambs, and goats. The enzymes separate milk into curds and whey—a key stage in the manufacturing process.
Traditional rennet is still used today, although alternatives (derived from mold, bacterial fermentation, and plants such as nettles and ivy) are increasingly common, if not slightly more palatable.
Allowable food defects
We live in an era of unprecedented hygiene and expect our food to contain only the ingredients labelled on the packaging. But anyone who has foraged in the wild will know that nature likes to share its rich bounty. There is nothing surprising about taking a bite out of a freshly picked apple to find the remaining half of a (presumably very upset) insect.
Our basic foodstuffs are not grown in sterile conditions and so our diet is peppered with a variety of unintended side dishes, including soil, rodent hairs, feces, mold, parasites and, of course, insects. The earthy nature of food production is acknowledged in the US through the publication of the Defect Levels Handbookthat defines acceptable (non-hazardous) levels of these undisclosed morsels.
For example, two cupfuls of cornmeal may legitimately contain up to five whole insects, ten insect fragments, ten rodent hairs, and five rodent poop fragments. It certainly puts that half-eaten apple into perspective.

An acceptable number of dead insects in two cupfuls of cornmeal.
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Pollution—heavy metal (▪ ▪ ▪)

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