A human fungal zombie from the TV present ‘The Last of Us.’ Credit: Liane Hentscher/HBO
Pancakes received’t flip you right into a zombie as in HBO’s ‘The Last of Us,’ however fungi in flour have been making individuals sick for a very long time.
In the HBO sequence “The Last of Us,” named after the favored online game of the identical identify, the flour provides of the world are contaminated with a fungus referred to as Cordyceps. When individuals eat pancakes or different meals made with that flour, the fungi develop inside their our bodies and switch them into zombies.
As a meals scientist, I research the impact of processing on the standard and security of vegatables and fruits, together with the flour used to make pancakes. While nobody goes to show right into a zombie from consuming pancakes in actual life, flour is usually contaminated with fungi that may produce mycotoxins that make individuals sick. Proper processing and cooking, nonetheless, can usually preserve you protected.
‘The Last of Us’ is premised on a pandemic that brings the world to an apocalyptic collapse.
How frequent is fungi in flour?
People have been consuming bread made out of wheat for about 14,000 years and cultivating wheat for not less than 10,000 years. In 1882, “drunken bread disease” was first documented in Russia, the place individuals reported dizziness, headache, trembling arms, confusion, and vomiting after consuming bread. Long earlier than that, Chinese peasants have been reporting that consuming pinkish wheat – a key signal of an infection with a mould referred to as Fusarium – triggered them to really feel sick. Clearly, fungi have been making individuals sick for a very long time.
Wheat, corn, rice, and even vegatables and fruits will be contaminated with fungi as they develop within the discipline. In “The Last of Us,” an epidemiologist theorizes that local weather change is inflicting the fungus to mutate so it could possibly infect people. The unlucky actuality is that fungi have turn out to be extra of an issue in recent times as hotter temperatures encourage their progress.
A 2017 research discovered that over 90% of wheat and corn flour samples in Washington, D.C., contained stay fungi, with Aspergillus and Fusarium the predominant varieties of mould in wheat flour. Fusarium grows on wheat within the discipline and might trigger a typical agricultural plant illness referred to as fusarium head blight, or scab.
Farmers use a number of strategies to scale back this devastating plant illness, together with implementing crop rotation, utilizing resistant varieties and fungicides and minimizing irrigation throughout flowering. After harvesting, they type the grains to take away contaminated wheat earlier than grinding them into flour. While sorting removes a lot of the contaminated wheat, small quantities of fungi can nonetheless make it into the flour.
Aspergillus is likely one of the predominant molds present in wheat flour.
Killing microorganisms in flour
The excellent news is that almost all fungi and different microorganisms die at 160-170 levels Fahrenheit (71-77 levels Celsius). Pancakes are typically cooked to an internal temperature of 190-200 °F (88-93 °C). Other cakes and breads are cooked to internal temperatures anywhere from 180 to 210 degrees Fahrenheit (82-99 °C). So, unlike in “The Last of Us,” as long as you bake or fry your dough, you’ll have killed the fungi.
The problem comes when people eat the flour without cooking it first, such as by consuming raw cookie dough or “licking the bowl clean.” Both raw egg and raw flour can contain microorganisms that make people sick. The microorganisms that public health officials are most worried about are E. coli and Salmonella, dangerous pathogens that can cause severe illness.
Most people don’t realize that the flour they buy at the store is raw flour that still contains live microorganisms. Flour is rarely commercially treated to be safe to eat raw because consumers almost always cook flour-based foods. While consumers can also attempt to heat-treat raw flour at home, this isn’t recommended because the flour may not be spread thinly enough to kill all of the microorganisms.
Some fungi and microorganisms can create spores, which are like seeds that help them survive adverse conditions. These spores can survive cooking, drying and freezing. There are even 4,500-year-old yeast spores that have been reawakened and made into bread. These fungal spores rarely cause serious illness in people, except in those with weakened immune systems.
Chemicals can be added to food to stop fungal growth. These additives include sorbates, benzoates and propionates. However, you almost never see these additives in flour or pancake mix because fungi can’t grow in a dry powder. The fungi either grew on the wheat in the field or on the bread after it is baked. For that reason, you may see these additives in bread but not in a powdered mix.
It might be best to leave that moldy bread alone.
Mycotoxins
The biggest risk from fungi is not that it will grow inside our bodies, but that it will grow on wheat or other foods and produce chemicals called mycotoxins that can cause severe health problems. When wheat is harvested and ground into flour, mycotoxins can get mixed in.
Unfortunately, while normal cooking can kill the microorganisms, it doesn’t destroy the mycotoxins. Eating mycotoxins can cause problems ranging from hallucinations to vomiting and diarrhea to cancer or death. Some of the common mycotoxins found in grain include aflatoxins, deoxynivalenol, ochratoxin A and fumonisin B.
The oldest known case of mycotoxin poisoning is recorded as a disease called ergotism. Ergotism was mentioned in the Old Testament and has been reported in Western Europe since A.D. 800. It has even been suggested that the Salem witch trials were caused by an outbreak of ergotism that led its victims to hallucinate, though many have disputed this idea. Wheat is less likely than other grains to have dangerous mycotoxins, which is why some have proposed that declining mortality in 18th-century Europe, especially in England, was due to the switch from a rye-based diet to a wheat-based diet.
Ultimately, you don’t need to worry about eating those pancakes. Farmers use many techniques to minimize fungal growth and remove moldy grain, and the government keeps a close eye on mycotoxin levels during crop production and storage. Just make sure you cook your bakery products before eating, and don’t eat anything that has started to mold.
Written by Sheryl Barringer, Professor of Food Science and Technology, The Ohio State University.
This article was first published in The Conversation.
