Probably yes!: Have you ever eaten fruit fly eggs?

“Several hundred thousand offspring hatch from a single fruit fly in a month,” says Hafen. “At high temperatures, a female can lay up to 1,000 eggs per day.” Within ten days, offspring that can mate grow from them. According to the expert, one fertilized female brought home with the fruit from the supermarket is enough for the fruit to spread widely in the kitchen. Or you can take home fruit that already contains lots of eggs.

“Females usually lay their eggs in the flesh of overripe or already rotten fruit,” says Hafen. They are white, long and have a maximum size of half a millimeter. Because they are below the surface, they cannot be seen and cannot be washed. Hafen says it’s probably more common than we think to eat eggs without being noticed. However, this is not a health problem. “Fruit flies do not spread disease,” says Hafen. They feed only on fruits. They do not need an intermediate animal host from which they can pick up pathogens.

Compared to other insects, Hafen says, we know better than average about Drosophila melanogaster, as fruit flies are technically called. This is because they reproduce very quickly and their life cycle is a maximum of two months. “These two factors help study aging processes, disease developments and genetic changes.” Findings from this are central to research into diseases such as cancer or diabetes. Fruit fly researchers have already received the Nobel Prize in Medicine five times. Hafen: “Fruit flies are excellent model organisms.”