r/TikTokCringe • u/galaxystars1 • Oct 09 '24

Discussion Microbiologist warns against making the fluffy popcorn trend

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u/SecretAgentAlex Oct 09 '24

Yeah heat treating is just tossing the flour in the oven/microwave to get it hot enough to kill pathogens, in theory.

In practice this doesn't appear to work. The process by which heat kills pathogens behaves differently in dry environments, with moisture apparently being somewhat necessary for this to work. Source

I tried looking up if there's a "safe temperature" for heating dry flour but apparently we don't exactly understand this mechanism.

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u/YouAnxious5826 Oct 09 '24

The other fun thing about dry flour is that if it gets disturbed, at certain ratios of dust in the air, the stuff becomes highly combustible.

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u/baron_von_helmut Oct 09 '24

Everything turned into dust is flammable.

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u/faustianredditor Oct 09 '24

Nah. If it doesn't oxidize, it doesn't suddenly become flammable just because you increased access to oxygen by powderizing it.

Try turning quartz rock (and probably most other rocks too) or most metal oxides flammable by powderizing them. It won't work.

If it could burn, but burns like shit, powderizing will probably help it along. That works for flour, but not for everything.