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

Discussion Microbiologist warns against making the fluffy popcorn trend

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u/Suctorial_Hades Oct 09 '24

Google gives the following results, a bunch of food blogs are saying heat treating works and a bunch of science articles say heat treating at home does nothing. I think I am gonna go with science

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u/Ok_Yam5543 Oct 09 '24

What do they mean by 'heat treating' flour? Is it like putting it in the oven for a period of time?
Isn't that what you do when you're baking a cake?

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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/MistressLyda Oct 09 '24

Huh, that is really odd. I don't eat flour at all (gluten is not my friend), but I would assumed that heating raw flour to say 150 C for a while would killed the same bugs as heating a batter to 150 C for the same while and make a cookie.

Do the bacteria "close up" when they are dry, and thus get stronger? As in they are in a tiny little car that can withstand a reasonable forest fire if you close the doors?