Insects Dwell Within Your Home Food Products More Often Than You May Think

Insects Dwell Within Your Home Food Products More Often Than You May Think

You may be surprised to learn that insects infest the food items that we store in our pantries often. In fact, experts agree that these particular insect contaminations are one of the most common at-home insect pest problems. Insects can gain access to several different food products in your home, but they infiltrate dried food items more than any other type of store-bought food. Insects are found within people’s food products often enough for these insect pests to be nicknamed “pantry pests”.

Pretty much any type of dried food item can become contaminated with pantry pests. Pantry pests most often gain access to packaged food that has already been opened, but it is not unheard of for pantry pests to gain access to packaged food by forcefully creating an opening. Food packages made from paper, cardboard, foil and cellophane can all be accessed by pantry pests. Pantry pests could chew their way into the food that people keep in their homes, or they could gain access to packaged food by slipping through small openings located on the packages.

Once pantry pests have gained access to people’s food items, they often reproduce and multiply, making an already unpleasant problem far more unpleasant. From here, pantry pests can migrate in significant numbers to other packaged food products that may be located inside different rooms of a person’s home. People have found adult insects, insect larvae, and pupa within their store bought food.

Insects pests can infest packaged food products during mass production within factories, but pantry pests are more likely to infiltrate your food items once these items reach grocery stores or homes. Obviously, food that has been stored within homes for extended periods of time are most at risk for pest infestations, but even recent purchases from the store can contain insect pests. So be sure to check your oatmeal container each morning for insects before these pests become a serious problem.

Have you ever found an insect pest within a packaged food item? If you have, then what type of food was compromised by the insect presence?