Don't Panic, But There Are Probably Cockroaches In Your Coffee

Bugs are a fact of life. Whether you're dealing with pesky aphids doing damage to your garden or fruit flies that have taken up residence in your kitchen while they snack on your fresh strawberries, we all have to deal with insects now and again. Turns out, there might be insects — well, fragments of them, at least — in an unexpected place: your favorite coffee grounds.

In a 2009 NPR Fresh Air episode, host Terry Gross talked with Douglas Emlen, a professor of biology at the University of Montana, who was studying dung beetles at the time. Their conversation lead to a discussion of cockroaches, and Emlen told a story of a favorite professor who found out that he was allergic to ground coffee — because it contained fragments of cockroaches. Like many foods, ground coffee is permitted to contain a certain amount of insect fragments since it's nearly impossible for coffee processing plants to ensure that no insects find their way into the massive piles of coffee beans at the factory. The end result: Your ground coffee likely contains a bit of unexpected protein in the form of (harmless) insect fragments.

The Food and Drug Administration sets standards for how many "defects" a food product is permitted to have. Defects, in this case, includes a wide variety of food contaminants, including insect fragments. While manufacturers are not permitted to purposely blend defects with food, the FDA permits the manufacture and sale of foods with defect levels that "pose no inherent hazard to health." While the FDA has not specifically addressed cockroach fragments in coffee, Douglas Emlen's anecdotal account regarding cockroach fragments in coffee certainly may be true. According to the FDA's Microanalytical Procedures Manual, or MPM, green coffee beans are considered defective if there's an active infestation or if more than 10% of the beans "are insect-infested or insect-damaged."

If you're allergic to cockroaches, of course, this could cause an issue. For people not allergic to cockroaches, however, it makes no difference whether you enjoy preground coffee or grind your own beans (you don't have to wait for the grinder at the grocery store — there are plenty of budget coffee grinders for home kitchens). If you're truly bothered by the idea of cockroach fragments in food, your best bet is to stay away from processed items, including ground coffee, and stick with from-scratch options.