With TikTok trends coming and going, it would be easy to discount a lot of the claims on there as attempts at viral fame. That's why when one Buzzfeed reporter saw multiple videos on the social media platform advising her to soak berries in salt water before eating to kill off mites and bugs living inside, she was doubtful.
But after giving it a go in the name of journalism, Krista Torress says she was "horrified" when bugs did indeed emerge from her berries.
In a video posted to her own TikTok, Torres holds strawberries while commenting: "Apparently there are little bugs inside these guys".
"So what you do is you fill up a glass of water, fill it with salt, and after the salt is dissolved you place the strawberries in," she explains in the video.
Torres says she let the strawberries sit in the salt water for about 10 minutes before seeing tiny worm-like bugs wriggling on their surface.
"There it is... I'm going to barf," she says in the video.
"The bugs blend in with the seeds and start crawling out of them."
Torres says she saw tiny worms on around six of the eight strawberries she soaked in the salt water. After some further research, she found the "white lil' worms" were the offspring of a fruit fly called the Spotted Wing Drosophila.
According to a gardening website, the females shoot their eggs into fruits that are just beginning to ripen, especially blueberries, strawberries and raspberries.
"Meaning these bugs are likely in all berries!" Torres adds.
She says she couldn't bring herself to eat the strawberries after her experiment but gave them to her son who said they tasted "a little salty" but fine.
Torres also pointed towards FDA food safety recommendations showing that fresh produce is allowed a certain amount of contamination from bug life when being sold.
Delicious!
"So, while this discovery is very upsetting to me, I also know that life must go on," she finishes the video.
