If you are in the middle of eating or are about to eat, I’m warning you that this column may make you lose your appetite and rethink what is on your lunch plate. Have you ever thought about what really goes into the foods you eat?

One of my friends posted a picture on Facebook of something she found in her salad from Wendy’s, and no, it wasn’t a rotten tomato. A living bug (or maggot) was crawling on the lettuce, waiting to accidentally be swallowed. I guess that still leaves their famous slogan, “Where’s the beef?” as a rhetorical question.

This isn’t the first instance of disturbing information about fast food restaurants. In one year, a person’s fast food meals will contain an average of 12 pubic hairs. How many times have you downed a meal without really looking at it?

Maybe you’ll just order a healthy salad instead to avoid open food around workers. Do you know how prepackaged salads stay crispy for so long? Propylene glycerol is sprayed on the leaves — this is what’s found in antifreeze and can cause skin and eye irritation.

If you’re more of a PB&J person, watch out for the average 30 bug fragments per half-cup of peanut butter that the FDA allows. Also, on average, one rodent hair can be found in that crunchy quarter cup of sandwich goodness.

So peanut butter is not your thing and you’re into meat and cheese sandwiches? Cheese products labeled as “processed” or “pasteurized” are full of additives and chemicals that make up a whopping 49 percent of the cheese. The remaining 51 percent of product is enough to pass FDA standards to allow it to be labeled cheese, if that’s what you still want to call it.

If you’re just not a sandwich person but still like your breads and baked goodies, you must like the texture of it. It gets that way from manufacturers adding L-cysteine, which is a non-essential amino acid. It doesn’t sound that bad, does it? Think again — it’s made from dissolved human hair or duck feathers.

Speaking of animals, the Easter bunny may have left you some jelly beans. Who doesn’t like small shiny pieces of candy that come in tons of flavors? Jelly beans are shiny because of the added shellac, which is released by the Kerria Lacca, a beetle-like insect from Thailand.

By now, you’re probably just looking for something to drink since bugs, hairs, and additives are in so many foods. Careful grabbing that can of cola; the phosphoric acid contained in it can dissolve a nail in as little as four days. Imagine what it’s doing to your teeth.

I wouldn’t advise reaching for a glass of milk, either. Cows are fed a hormone (somatotropin or rBST) to forcefully make them produce more milk. This hormone has been linked to breast, colon, and prostate cancer. Personally, I’d rather get my calcium from fresh vegetables.

My advice would be to take a second look at what you’re eating. If the ingredients list looks like a foreign language, your body probably won’t recognize it either. The best choice is to pick foods that don’t need an ingredient list, like fresh fruits and vegetables, lean meats, and dry-roasted nuts, as examples.

Next time you find yourself sitting in the drive-thru at a fast food place, imagine what goes on behind the scenes. When you order a salad, just make sure to have them hold the bugs.

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