What Happens To Your Body When You Eat Maggots? This Celeb Prison Food Claim Is Disgusting

Sean "Diddy" Combs, who's currently being held at Brooklyn's Metropolitan Detention Center, won't be sentenced until October 3, but his lawyer has already filed a petition asking the judge to release him on bail. One of the reasons? According to the petition (via Page Six), the detention center allegedly serves "food that is expired or infested with maggots." Diddy even backed up his claims with a photo.

If those claims are true, it could spell serious trouble — not just for Diddy, but for the health of everyone in the facility. Maggots are basically fly larvae and look like tiny, cream-colored worms. If you eat food crawling with them, and they survive in your digestive system, it can lead to abdominal pain, anal itching, and even rectal bleeding. That's because the larvae feed on living tissue.

The condition is called myiasis, and while it's rare in the United States, that doesn't make contaminated food any less dangerous. Maggot-infested meals can also raise your risk of food poisoning.

Your average housefly might seem like just a pesky nuisance, but it can cover a lot of ground in a single day. Before it even makes it into your home, it may pick up bacteria like E. coli and salmonella from garbage or other unsanitary places outside and then spread it all over your kitchen surfaces. If you've got food sitting out, a fly could easily drop some of that bacteria onto it. It might not seem like much, but bacteria can double every 20 minutes if left at room temperature.

If that's not gross enough, consider that a single fly can lay up to 500 eggs in just three or four days (per Pestco Professional Services). But it's not going to lay them just anywhere, such as that sliced watermelon sitting out on your counter. Flies prefer to lay eggs on exposed, decaying meat or produce. Once the eggs hatch into larvae, the maggots feed on the bacteria in the rotting food.

Swallowing a maggot by accident won't always make you sick, but you could end up with food poisoning if the maggot — or the food itself — is contaminated with E. coli or salmonella. Maggots don't show up on fresh food, so if Diddy really did find maggots in his meals, it's a pretty good sign that the food was already spoiled.

Maggots are actually eaten in some parts of the world, such as casu marzu, a maggot-infested cheese found in Sardinia (per CNN). But that doesn't mean eating maggots is safe. If you see a maggot in your food, it's a good sign the food is spoiled and not safe to eat.

The "danger zone" for food safety is between 40 and 140 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the U.S. Food Safety and Inspection Service. Foods left in this temperature range for more than two hours should be tossed. And if you're having an outdoor cookout where it's 90 degrees Fahrenheit or hotter, you only have one hour before food starts to spoil. Eating food that's been left out too long is one of the most common causes of food poisoning. The problem is, spoiled food doesn't always look or even smell bad; it might even still seem fresh. High-risk foods include meat, dairy, eggs, seafood, cooked pasta, and prepared salads and fruits.

While you can control food safety at home, it's harder in large-scale settings. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that restaurants, banquet halls, and institutions are some of the most common sources of foodborne illness. A 2017 study in the American Journal of Public Health found more than 200 foodborne outbreaks occurred in correctional facilities between 1998 and 2014, mostly due to food being left at room temperature.