Do fruit flies carry any diseases?
Fruit flies do not carry infectious agents on the inside of their bodies. They are not disease vectors. However, they can carry bacteria on the outside of their bodies and transmit them by contact with fruits or vegetables, which can cause disease when consumed.
Is it safe to eat food that has been touched by fruit flies?
No, it is not safe. If food was touched by fruit flies, there may be bacteria that cause disease. The appropriate strategy is to remove the damaged area of the food or to dispose of it.
Can fruit flies be harmful to humans?
Fruit flies are not harmful to humans. They do not bite or sting. They also don’t have venom. However, when fruit flies wound ripe fruit or vegetables to lay eggs, bacteria can enter the food, and when humans consume it, they can get a disease.
What happens if you eat a fruit fly?
There is no scientific evidence of diseases caused by eating a fruit fly. Also, there is no scientific evidence that eating the fruit fly’s eggs can cause disease.
So this just told me that eating fruit flies will give you a disease, followed by a statement that there’s no evidence that eating fruit flies will give you a disease
I think it’s saying that you can eat the fruit fly, but not food the fruit fly has touched.
It’s always worth remembering, though, that bacteria live on some foods more easily than others. I’d be surprised if most bacteria could live long in wine.
It’s the trouble with researching and reading around questions like these because you’ll get a lot answers like this one that seem more sensible than others and even provide some pretty plausible sounding reasoning behind their conclusions but then proceed to either directly contradict themselves, or simply leave an obvious implicit contradiction unaddressed.
The issue I think is, if we take what’s said as true (no telling if it is, but again, sounds pretty reasonabland plausible) it can’t tell you much about the real likelihood that it will actually cause you real problems in real life. It seems entirely reasonable to believe that fruit flies may carry bacteria on the surface of their bodies and that that bacteria could be harmful and so reasonable for the author to include and thus not be giving dangerous advice just saying everything is safe don’t worry about it. But it’s also kind of useless what are the odds the particular bacteria is going to be harmful vs something your body can easily dispatch? How much bacteria would you need to ingest for it to be dangerous? Is there enough of it on one fruitfly to be problematic? If so, what about the surfaces of different foods? What about liquids? Including wine? What are the relative odds of all of these factors aligning just right to make you sick?
If you replace fruitfly in that text with just fly, I expect that would likely also be true. If you asked people can you eat cake that’s had a fly on it you’ll get a gamut of responses from people saying of course it’s fine they do it all the time to people saying it’ll definitely make you sick to a more nuanced response like this one, but I bring up the case of flies in particular because the fact is the odds are very good that you eat food a fly has been on all the time because they land on it and then fly away without any noticing. Sometimes people eat the food and get sick and the mechanism for how that happened might be exactly as described, but then again most of the time you eat a slice of cake from a display case and you’re fine despite it likely having had many visitors on its surface during its time there.
Despite its seemingly contradictory way in which it’s written, I think this is probably consistent, it provides a mechanism how a fruit fly could make you sick then goes on to say there’s no evidence that fruit flies do make you sick, which is not surprising because attributing a case where someone got sick from ingesting bacteria to a fruit fly is going to be pretty difficult when there’s so many mechanisms by which that could happen to you.
Frankly without providing some additional context to nail down how likely the proposed mechanism is to actually cause disease and in what specific circumstances that type of information is truthful yet misleading. Honestly, I’d drink it, but I can’t honestly say I have any solid evidence that’s definitely safe, only that it just seems so unlikely that it could represent a serious threat, whilst being capable of happening so easily yet not seeming to represent a major public health concern. It seems like if it really was that dangerous, human cohabitation in areas with any appreciable fruit fly population would be untenable.
I think the difference is that normal flies are much more likely to have walked on dead things and shit. Wasn’t there also something that they actually spit on your food to distribute bacteria so their eggs have a better rotting environment to maggot around in after they hatch?
For what it’s worth, here’s a study.
So this just told me that eating fruit flies will give you a disease, followed by a statement that there’s no evidence that eating fruit flies will give you a disease
studying with ChatGPT be like
I think it’s saying that you can eat the fruit fly, but not food the fruit fly has touched.
It’s always worth remembering, though, that bacteria live on some foods more easily than others. I’d be surprised if most bacteria could live long in wine.
Is wine generally alcoholic enough to provide any sort of disinfectant property?
I don’t think so, but it’s acidic enough to not be a hospitable place for anything not adapted to it.
Just wash your flies before consumption.
It’s the trouble with researching and reading around questions like these because you’ll get a lot answers like this one that seem more sensible than others and even provide some pretty plausible sounding reasoning behind their conclusions but then proceed to either directly contradict themselves, or simply leave an obvious implicit contradiction unaddressed.
The issue I think is, if we take what’s said as true (no telling if it is, but again, sounds pretty reasonabland plausible) it can’t tell you much about the real likelihood that it will actually cause you real problems in real life. It seems entirely reasonable to believe that fruit flies may carry bacteria on the surface of their bodies and that that bacteria could be harmful and so reasonable for the author to include and thus not be giving dangerous advice just saying everything is safe don’t worry about it. But it’s also kind of useless what are the odds the particular bacteria is going to be harmful vs something your body can easily dispatch? How much bacteria would you need to ingest for it to be dangerous? Is there enough of it on one fruitfly to be problematic? If so, what about the surfaces of different foods? What about liquids? Including wine? What are the relative odds of all of these factors aligning just right to make you sick?
If you replace fruitfly in that text with just fly, I expect that would likely also be true. If you asked people can you eat cake that’s had a fly on it you’ll get a gamut of responses from people saying of course it’s fine they do it all the time to people saying it’ll definitely make you sick to a more nuanced response like this one, but I bring up the case of flies in particular because the fact is the odds are very good that you eat food a fly has been on all the time because they land on it and then fly away without any noticing. Sometimes people eat the food and get sick and the mechanism for how that happened might be exactly as described, but then again most of the time you eat a slice of cake from a display case and you’re fine despite it likely having had many visitors on its surface during its time there.
Despite its seemingly contradictory way in which it’s written, I think this is probably consistent, it provides a mechanism how a fruit fly could make you sick then goes on to say there’s no evidence that fruit flies do make you sick, which is not surprising because attributing a case where someone got sick from ingesting bacteria to a fruit fly is going to be pretty difficult when there’s so many mechanisms by which that could happen to you.
Frankly without providing some additional context to nail down how likely the proposed mechanism is to actually cause disease and in what specific circumstances that type of information is truthful yet misleading. Honestly, I’d drink it, but I can’t honestly say I have any solid evidence that’s definitely safe, only that it just seems so unlikely that it could represent a serious threat, whilst being capable of happening so easily yet not seeming to represent a major public health concern. It seems like if it really was that dangerous, human cohabitation in areas with any appreciable fruit fly population would be untenable.
I think the difference is that normal flies are much more likely to have walked on dead things and shit. Wasn’t there also something that they actually spit on your food to distribute bacteria so their eggs have a better rotting environment to maggot around in after they hatch?