I have found bugs before in store-bought oats and rice but never in cannery wheat. I take care of the bugs in oats/rice by sticking the package in the freezer for 3 days right when I bring it home from the store. But what do you do for a 25 lb sack of wheat?
Has anyone had this happen to them? What do you do to prevent pests in the wheat? (Besides proper rotation of course). One google search led to a comment somewhere along the lines of "well at least you know there were no insecticides used while growing this food."
What are your thoughts? Are bugs added protein? Or nasty pests? What can I do to prevent this from happening again?
9 comments:
Added protein!
Also, you can wash it off before using. Don´t throw under any circumstances, it could be used for a lot of things: feeding animals, sprouting, growing..
Laura
It's so disturbing to find bugs in our food. I just fed a cylinder of oatmeal to our chickens cause it was full....and I mean FULL, of cobwebs, tiny moths, and little worm sheddings....date 2010. I don't know if they got in here at home, (which I suspect), or they came with the product. For my wheat I store it in a mylar bag with oxygen absorbers. If it's old, I plant it and grow wheat grass for our animals.
Donna G.
Gardens Alive sells a pantry moth trap that works on Indian Meal Moths which are usually the culprits.
I have a chest freezer and I throw all of my wheat in there for 2 weeks. If you want to make sure it is all dead freeze for 2 weeks take it out for 2 weeks to let any eggs hatch then refreeze for another couple of weeks. I have heard of people using a certain type of gas (nitrogen maybe?) to kill bugs in their grains, I guess it also gets rid of the oxygen.
Years ago when I lived in the Amazon, I would buy flour and it always had critters, I just shifted it and got rid of them. But I still laugh when I think of the time I bought "black eyed peas" and after I soaked the beans all the "black eyes" floated out of the white beans! I tossed those.
However if you are living in Florida, you are in a subtropical climate and you will have lots and lots of critters. Really clean your panty, check out any cracks and holes (like peg board holes) for little moths. And do what you can to get it free of bugs. Also as mentioned cold is a key element in bug genocide, tropical bugs are not adapted to temps that are cool.
Can you reuse the wheat for something else, grind it up for preschoolers and use it for "flour play" Or paste, or chicken feed?
Just remember it things were really
bad,people eat bugs. Think of all the stories of the world wars and food shortages and prisioners of war who ate bugs in the rice and were glad of the protein. Gross but when it's the difference in eating or not, we do things we normally wouldn't.
But it is gross having bugs in the kitchen. Kelly
In many countries the people eat bugs as a part of their diet. So why are we so squeamish here in the US? In my opinion, bugs yum added protein, and no big deal, sift them out and eat the food not the bugs :)
I rotate 50# bags of wheat thru my freezer in 2 gallon zip-loc bags than transfer the wheat into mylar bags and seal in 5 gal buckets...lots of work but no bugs!!
Hmmm-I read somewhere that freezing is not good for the grain itself, and sealing it up with o2 absorbers 'kills' the grain, you can't sprout it. I use food grade diamateous earth. A spoon in the bottom of a bucket, middle and on top of the grain. No bugs so far!!
I use food grade diomateous earth as well. I buy it from Wolf Creek Ranch on Ebay. A little goes a long way and it really works to keep the bugs under control in my buckets of rice, wheat, beans, etc.
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