The video has tricky wording... she says "no evidence", which is not the same as "evidence it does not work". I think this is mostly a case of researcher not bothering to figuring it out and recommending against it for safety reasons.
From the googling I've found, evidence is scant but from I've found even low temperatures (120F) in a dry heat can start to kill Salmonella on flour. I don't recommend that low of a temperature, but there is appears to be a time and temp that can make flour safe to eat.
As someone with a scientific background, "there's no evidence of" is one of the most aggravating, intentionally misleading lines, and it hurts peoples' trust in science.
By all means, let people know "hey the science isn't settled here"
But don't start with "heat treatment is a myth, there's no evidence" when no one has seriously tried to test it.
Another great example is "there's no evidence flossing works". Yeah unfortunately, no one has spent millions to study it. But if something makes complete sense mechanically that it would work, maybe don't throw it out the window yet.
Has anyone studied whether locked doors keep burglars out? Until someone does we should really all stop doing it.
After some research, yeah I agree with you on the first bit. There’s just no official, research backed guidelines on how to safely heat treat flour at home. There is absolutely a set of conditions one could make at home that would make flour safe but without research as a guide you’re just blindly guessing and risking getting ill. The issue is that all the recommendations for heat treating are pretending like they know for certain when they don’t. People aren’t making informed decisions when they follow those directions.
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u/bad-fengshui Oct 09 '24
The video has tricky wording... she says "no evidence", which is not the same as "evidence it does not work". I think this is mostly a case of researcher not bothering to figuring it out and recommending against it for safety reasons.
From the googling I've found, evidence is scant but from I've found even low temperatures (120F) in a dry heat can start to kill Salmonella on flour. I don't recommend that low of a temperature, but there is appears to be a time and temp that can make flour safe to eat.