If you are a gamer, you must have often scooped rice for yourself or had your parents prepare it next to you, but you haven’t eaten it yet because you’re still caught up in the final match with your friends. However, this “final match” sometimes turns into the second, third, fourth, fifth, or even more if you keep losing, and so your bowl of rice continues to be “neglected” and becomes a shelter for wandering flies.
So what will you do if you discover a fly has landed on your food? Will you throw away that delicious bowl of rice, or will you just scoop out the part where the fly landed, or will you continue eating as if nothing happened? Usually, the third scenario happens more often because people think that just waving their hand to shoo the fly away is enough to eat safely. Unfortunately, things are not that simple. These flies bring more harm than their small appearance suggests.
In this article, I will list 4 main harms so you can better understand what really happens when a fly lands on your food, so you can remind yourself to eat before the match, or clean up after the game.
Flies Can Vomit on Your Food
If you didn’t know, flies eat by sucking liquids through their tubular mouths. Because of this mouth shape, flies need to turn food into liquid. To do this, they will inject saliva into your food, and this saliva can contain anything they have eaten before, such as rotten meat or feces, etc.
Flies Can Lay Eggs on Your Food
Leftover food that you save for the next day can become a perfect nest for flies to lay eggs, and after some time, these tiny eggs will develop into “baby” flies (maggots or larvae). You probably already know how harmful it would be to eat them, right? Therefore, remember to store leftovers in the fridge or cover them with a food dome or similar items if you don’t want to raise flies in your home.
The Legs and Wings of Flies Are Full of Bacteria
You probably know that flies carry a lot of bacteria, but did you know that the highest concentration of bacteria is actually on their surfaces? According to Nanyang Technological University, just one step out of the hundreds of steps of a fly is enough to leave dozens of bacteria behind. This means that everything the fly has ever touched can be contaminated.
Flies Carry More Than 60 Different Diseases
The flies you often see hovering around your house can transmit at least 65 different diseases to humans just by crawling from garbage bags to food. Among these are dysentery, diarrhea, cholera, and leprosy, and it’s not just humans that can be affected; animals like chickens or pigs can also get infected, etc.
In summary, when a fly lands on your food, it leaves more consequences than you think, and these consequences cannot be resolved just by swatting the fly away. So will you change your habits, or will you continue with your old ways? Please leave a comment below to let me know.
Thank you for your interest!
Source: brightside