A human fungal zombie from the TV present 'The Last of Us.' Liane Hentscher/HBO
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 known as Cordyceps. When folks 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 examine 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 folks sick. Proper processing and cooking, nonetheless, can typically maintain you secure.
‘The Last of Us’ is premised on a pandemic that brings the world to an apocalyptic collapse.
How widespread is fungi in flour?
People have been consuming bread comprised of wheat for about 14,000 years and cultivating wheat for at the very least 10,000 years. In 1882, “drunken bread illness” was first documented in Russia, the place folks reported dizziness, headache, trembling palms, 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 known as Fusarium – brought on them to really feel unwell. Clearly, fungi have been making folks sick for a very long time.
Wheat, corn, rice and even vegatables and fruits could be contaminated with fungi as they develop within the subject. In “The Last of Us,” an epidemiologist theorizes that local weather change is inflicting the fungus to mutate so it may possibly infect people. The unlucky actuality is that fungi have grow to be extra of an issue in recent times as hotter temperatures encourage their progress.
A 2017 examine 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 subject and may trigger a standard agricultural plant illness known 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 many of the contaminated wheat, small quantities of fungi can nonetheless make it into the flour.
Wheat contaminated with fusarium head blight have a attribute pink hue.
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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 usually cooked to an inside temperature of 190-200 F (88-93 C). Other desserts and breads are cooked to inside temperatures wherever from 180 to 210 levels Fahrenheit (82-99 C). So, in contrast to in “The Last of Us,” so long as you bake or fry your dough, you’ll have killed the fungi.
The drawback comes when folks eat the flour with out cooking it first, resembling by consuming uncooked cookie dough or “licking the bowl clear.” Both uncooked egg and uncooked flour can comprise microorganisms that make folks sick. The microorganisms that public well being officers are most nervous about are E. coli and Salmonella, harmful pathogens that may trigger extreme sickness.
Most folks don’t notice that the flour they purchase on the retailer is uncooked flour that also comprises stay microorganisms. Flour isn’t commercially handled to be suitable for eating uncooked as a result of customers nearly all the time cook dinner flour-based meals. While customers may try and heat-treat uncooked flour at dwelling, this isn’t really useful as a result of the flour is probably not unfold thinly sufficient to kill the entire microorganisms.
Aspergillus is among the predominant molds present in wheat flour.
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Some fungi and microorganisms can create spores, that are like seeds that assist them survive opposed circumstances. These spores can survive cooking, drying and freezing. There are even 4,500-year-old yeast spores which have been reawakened and made into bread. These fungal spores not often trigger severe sickness in folks, besides in these with weakened immune techniques.
Chemicals could be added to meals to cease fungal progress. These components embrace sorbates, benzoates and propionates. However, you nearly by no means see these components in flour or pancake combine as a result of fungi can’t develop in a dry powder. The fungi both grew on the wheat within the subject or on the bread after it’s baked. For that purpose, you might even see these components in bread however not in a powdered combine.
Mycotoxins
The greatest threat from fungi isn’t that it’s going to develop inside our our bodies, however that it’s going to develop on wheat or different meals and produce chemical substances known as mycotoxins that may trigger extreme well being issues. When wheat is harvested and floor into flour, mycotoxins can get blended in.
Unfortunately, whereas regular cooking can kill the microorganisms, it doesn’t destroy the mycotoxins. Eating mycotoxins may cause issues starting from hallucinations to vomiting and diarrhea to most cancers or loss of life. Some of the widespread mycotoxins present in grain embrace aflatoxins, deoxynivalenol, ochratoxin A and fumonisin B.
It could be finest to depart that moldy bread alone.
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The oldest recognized case of mycotoxin poisoning is recorded as a illness known as ergotism. Ergotism was talked about within the Old Testament and has been reported in Western Europe since A.D. 800. It has even been urged that the Salem witch trials have been brought on by an outbreak of ergotism that led its victims to hallucinate, although many have disputed this concept. Wheat is much less doubtless than different grains to have harmful mycotoxins, which is why some have proposed that declining mortality in 18th-century Europe, particularly in England, was as a result of swap from a rye-based weight loss plan to a wheat-based weight loss plan.
Ultimately, you don’t want to fret about consuming these pancakes. Farmers use many strategies to reduce fungal progress and take away moldy grain, and the federal government retains an in depth eye on mycotoxin ranges throughout crop manufacturing and storage. Just ensure you cook dinner your bakery merchandise earlier than consuming, and don’t eat something that has began to mould.
Sheryl Barringer doesn’t work for, seek the advice of, personal shares in or obtain funding from any firm or group that might profit from this text, and has disclosed no related affiliations past their educational appointment.
