DY: Our levels of infestation are higher? I would have thought that with modern farming and the use of some (still-legal) pesticides that our levels of infestation would be much, much lower. And we do see some Achronim advocating not eating certain fruits. But no one Assered all vegetables, which is what they would have had to have done if our standards were applied to them. Am I the only person who finds it more than curious that the Achronim don’t explain how to check individual vegetables. Pashtus is they just looked and if they saw nothing then it was fine.
I did once hear something on this topic from a tremendous Talmid Chacham. He said that back in the day, it was hard to live as a human being, let alone a Jew. You would have to work a ton just to get a tiny bit of food and nighttime was almost unusable because candles were expensive and there were no lights. Nowadays, where it’s much, much easier just to be a human being, we can afford to place more restrictions on ourselves as Jews.