Figs and wasps

I have long been squeamish about Fig Newtons. I mean, what’s in them? Oh, wait: figs.

The other day, at a gathering to which people brought cookies, I tried a Fig Newton, the first Fig Newton I’ve ever eaten. It tasted good, as Ernest Hemingway might have written. It was a good Newton.

And then I came across this bit, via The New Yorker : “When you eat a dried fig, you’re probably chewing fig-wasp mummies, too.”

But then Elaine found this bit, from Louise Ferguson, extension specialist at the UC Davis Department of Plant Sciences, speaking to Bon Appétit :

“There’s no fig wasp in there by the time people are eating the fruit,” says Ferguson. The female fig produces an enzyme that completely digests the exoskeleton before hungry humans can take a bite. To be clear: “The crunchy bits are seeds, not wasp parts,” she adds.

Bon Appétit credits a 2022 viral tweet for the claim about wasp parts in figs. And the tweeter credited the 2016 New Yorker item.

[I’m not sure what I’d rather believe: that I didn’t eat a cookie with wasp parts, or that I did.]