What exactly are the worms in cherries?
Cherries are one of people's favorite fruits, but a message that went viral on the internet has left many people feeling uneasy: a netizen soaked bought cherries in salt water, and half an hour later many small worm-like creatures resembling “maggots” appeared on the surface of the cherries, which looks very unpleasant. Below let us take a look together at what kind of worm the cherry worm is!
Is it true that cherries have worms?
It is true that cherries have worms. A reporter specially conducted a set of experiments for this: after removing surface dirt from cherries randomly bought at a fruit stall, they were soaked respectively in cups of warm boiled water and salt water. Half an hour later, no abnormality was found in the cherries soaked in warm boiled water. But in the cherries soaked in salt water, three small white worms were found, only the size of a thread end and the length of a ballpoint pen tip, looking like maggots. Although it is a fact that cherries contain small worms, it is not as exaggerated as the “9 out of 10” claimed online.
What kind of worm is the cherry worm?
The cherry worm is the larva of the fruit fly. According to Director Wang Jin, who is in charge of the cherry research group at the Fruit Tree Research Institute of the Chongqing Academy of Agricultural Sciences, these small white worms inside cherries are larvae hatched from fruit fly eggs laid inside the cherries. Fruits that give off fragrance, such as bayberry, strawberry, kiwi, grape, pear and banana, are the favorites of fruit flies.
Can cherry worms really be eaten?
Cherry worms can be eaten. The larvae of fruit flies are different from the “maggots” in our usual impression. They are relatively close to flies, but they are not flies. They are a type of fly that lives on ripe fruit and can appear on various ripe fruits. Fruit flies parasitize inside plant fruits and only move about on fruit. From birth to growth, the larvae stay in an unpolluted environment and rarely carry pathogens. Therefore they do not harm animals, let alone humans. On the contrary, fruit flies are rich in protein and beneficial to health. Moreover, cherries that can soak out worms are precisely those that have not used pesticides, so they can be eaten with confidence. Of course, eating worms after all makes people feel “rather uncomfortable”. If you want to taste the deliciousness “without worries”, the best method is still to soak fruits such as cherries and bayberry in salt water.
Further reading: fruit fly
Fruit flies are widely found in temperate and tropical climate zones around the world. Because their main food is yeast, and rotting fruit easily breeds yeast, their traces can be seen in human habitats such as orchards and vegetable markets. Apart from the North and South Poles, at least more than 1000 fruit fly species have been discovered so far. Most species feed on rotting fruit or plant matter, while a small number feed only on fungi, tree sap or pollen. At the same time, as a eukaryotic multicellular insect, the fruit fly has physiological functions and metabolic systems similar to those of mammals, is very sensitive to air quality, and its abnormal behavior can reflect indoor air pollution.