Went to bake cookies after months of not baking.. Found this surprise. Mom says it’s okay to use, I think it’s unlikely. Can someone tell me what the heck these are
Went to bake cookies after months of not baking.. Found this surprise. Mom says it’s okay to use, I think it’s unlikely. Can someone tell me what the heck these are
by OddCreature626
45 Comments
PoppysMelody
Looks like the flour bugs my ma always warned me about. Weevils?
Edit: Don’t use it… there are bugs in it
AlanOhms
It’s definitely some kind of bug. I’m sure you could eat it if you really wanted to, but I sure AF wouldn’t.
Scarlet-Witch
My mom grew up poor so she’d probably sift them out and use it but it’s probably safer to just toss it.
The_PracticalOne
Weevils. Sieve them.
ritsosbitchos
I come from a country where certain culinary schools are public, so they’re free and funded by the government. I got my pastry degree from a school like that, which means limited resources. So when all of our flour (20+ kgs) got infected with these little guys, we were told to sift them and use the flour normally. The thought behind this is that the bug and eggs get left behind, and whatever gets stuck behind gets obliterated by the high oven degrees. In every professional bakery/pastry shop I’ve worked, they do the same thing. 99% of the shops I believe do this, so we have all eaten this kind of flour many times. I would sift this and use the flour, just because I’m cheap like that. No reason to use it if you have no financial problems, but nothing’s gonna happen to you if you bake and eat this flour!
untangleyarnball
I like to keep my flour in the fridge for a bit, but I’ve seen other bakers use one of those vacuum seal jars for the flour
analytical_blobfish
If you store your flour in the freezer, it’s less likely to get bugs and it doesn’t go stale as fast
TheCoziestBaker
I freeze my flour for 3 days before sifting and then storing in a glass airtight container. Buggy eggs can be found in the flour. The freezing helps kill the eggs, and the sifting will get rid of them. Then storing in an airtight container will prevent it from happening/happening with a different type of bug.
I personally wouldn’t eat this!
TheDarlizzle
Your mother is why I don’t trust eating other peoples food 😂😂😂 please don’t use it it’s got weevils
Vertigobee
r/weeviltime
Ozem50
I don’t think I could use it knowing they had been in there. I’m okay if they were there and no one told me about it. I know silly isn’t it
Entire-Discipline-49
Just fyi, go through every dry good in your pantry to find and remove the infected products then clean all the shelves in that area and dust with diatomaceous earth to kill any lingering bugs and prevent their larva from surviving.
If there’s not a lot left I’d just get a new bag but you can sift and use it immediately if you want to.
mrbubblesnatcher
This is why I freeze my flour
Galaxy1815
Don’t you know that in the service we must choose the lesser of two weevils?
duckyjaime
Those are weevils. Haven’t seen that in years.
Carbonus_Fibrus
Free proteins
hellothere808
Horror story about these exact bugs: when I was in high school, my grandmother bought a bag of Arthur’s organic wheat flour. A couple months later, we noticed these fuckers were everywhere.. in the closets, in lampshades, in the bed, in all crevices of kitchen surfaces. They were even in our spice cabinet— we were shaking the spices with them inside for weeks without knowing. We finally look at the flour in the back of the closet, and it has dozens of perfectly eaten holes throughout the bag. My mom opened it up and there must have been a couple hundred or so just squirming around. THROW. IT. OUT!!!
Background_Run_8809
Once when I was 12 my two friends slept over and we were making pancakes the next morning and I saw some of these in the box but got so embarrassed that instead of telling them, I went to great lengths to try to hide it. I made the pancakes and served them and then pretended to eat mine. I never told a soul until now.
RollingKatamari
These aren’t weevils but either drugstore beetles or cigarette beetles.
OP, the flour is the least of your concern. You and your mom and anyone else in your household need to go through every dry goods in your house.
These bugs you see are the last stage of this beetle, there are probably more hiding and also lots of eggs and larvae.
Please check: rice, pasta, flour, herbs & spices, cereal, ….anything that has been opened and you find bugs or eggs inside, you need to toss.
Get out the vacuum cleaner and go to town on every little crevice, nook & cranny. And check behind any cupboard as well. Spray bug spray in these nooks & crannies at night and in the morning you’ll probably see a bunch of dead beetles.
These beetles are not to mess with!
thebozinone9
sift and use.
worked for a company that manufactures bread for McDonald’s. we’d see this shit all the time whenever they’d take unloading samples for us to assess.
if you eat bread anywhere, I guarantee they’ve sifted and used. especially the organic stuff.
edit: anywhere that you’ve eaten MANUFACTURED bread.
JinormousLoser
Do I know that all flour already likely contains bugs? Yes. BUT I can pretend it doesn’t. There ain’t no pretending they aren’t in this bag 😭
unoriginal_goat
They’re flour weevils they’re harmless.
You’ve eaten tens of thousands of them over the years hence why your mom said it’s okay.
They’re in the flour there isn’t flour without these little guys and their eggs.
It’s not caused by lack of sanitation they’re just in the flour and the flour was left alone.
LikeableZephyr
Throw that out and clean out your cabinets.
beautifultoyou
Just sift them out. It’s still safe to use the flour.
I’ll just add that if it were me.. I’d just throw it away and get a new bag. But I have the means to do that. If you don’t, it’s okay, it is still safe to eat.
Bocifer1
I would toss it – but you really would be fine sifting and using this.
Everyone in the comments is fixated on their being dead bug parts and eggs leftover…
But where do we think these came from to begin with? They didn’t materialize out of nowhere.
jaybee423
I learned from this sub to start freezing all my stuff now before I store in air tight containers because of these guys!
Alarmed_Aardvark_399
My mom taught me to put bay leaves in my flour to the wevils out. I buy flour in the 25# bags and put in 5 gallon buckets with sealing lids. I usually put 3 or 4 bay leaves. I’m 62 years old. I’ve been doing this since in my 20’s. Never had a wevil.
Old_Refrigerator2923
Weevils
shoresandsmores
Drugstore beetles?
I’ve been battling them for fucking years. Everything is now in airtight containers. Open a bag of chips? Store it in a ziploc bag. Etc.
I found them in a fucking closed BBQ spice container though. 😭 but besides that and a thing of dog treats, I can’t find the fucking source. I swear there’s something in the far reaches of the attic that is keeping them going.
Shes_Crafty_4301
This is why my grandma never let me lick the bowl. This happened all the time when she was young. During the depression, there was no extra money to chuck flour because of a few bugs. Sift them out, cook it well.
BahamaArtist242
I really wish I could unread some of these comments. This whole feed was a trap😶
Adventurous-Start874
Flour weevils. Its safe to eat, in fact, if it werent safe to eat none of us would be here. These guys are the og reason for sifting flour.
magiccfetus
they look to be having the time of thier life atleast 😂
They’ve survived 100,000 rad exposures (10x cockroaches).
beakbea
This is why I don’t attend potlucks. Or accept gifts of food.
TimeTraveler1960
I absolutely came to the wrong sub at the wrong time 😳
Prize_Pie8239
yeah that’s a big no!
hashbeardy420
In my experience it’s best to choose the lesser of two weevils.
buzzedewok
This is why I freeze my flour before I use it.
Aubbles11089
When I was a kid we would just sift out the weevils and still use the flour. They don’t carry any diseases, so not much to worry about.
SimGemini
If I can physically see it, I couldn’t go through with baking it and then eating it. I am aware there are bugs in our peanut butter and other foods we are unaware of. I just don’t want to see it.
Aisukoshka
weevils, they’re fine. Sift the flour and go wild
andyvl0393
Do you live in a hot or humid city? If you had it on a pantry check everything around it those damn bugs spread like wild fire, I always store flour on the fridge since I once had this happen and had to throw out a ton of spices and various flours
LillianIsaDo
Weevils! Use airtight containers or pit your flour in the fridge or freezer. You can just sift this batch.
45 Comments
Looks like the flour bugs my ma always warned me about. Weevils?
Edit: Don’t use it… there are bugs in it
It’s definitely some kind of bug. I’m sure you could eat it if you really wanted to, but I sure AF wouldn’t.
My mom grew up poor so she’d probably sift them out and use it but it’s probably safer to just toss it.
Weevils. Sieve them.
I come from a country where certain culinary schools are public, so they’re free and funded by the government. I got my pastry degree from a school like that, which means limited resources. So when all of our flour (20+ kgs) got infected with these little guys, we were told to sift them and use the flour normally. The thought behind this is that the bug and eggs get left behind, and whatever gets stuck behind gets obliterated by the high oven degrees.
In every professional bakery/pastry shop I’ve worked, they do the same thing. 99% of the shops I believe do this, so we have all eaten this kind of flour many times. I would sift this and use the flour, just because I’m cheap like that. No reason to use it if you have no financial problems, but nothing’s gonna happen to you if you bake and eat this flour!
I like to keep my flour in the fridge for a bit, but I’ve seen other bakers use one of those vacuum seal jars for the flour
If you store your flour in the freezer, it’s less likely to get bugs and it doesn’t go stale as fast
I freeze my flour for 3 days before sifting and then storing in a glass airtight container. Buggy eggs can be found in the flour. The freezing helps kill the eggs, and the sifting will get rid of them. Then storing in an airtight container will prevent it from happening/happening with a different type of bug.
I personally wouldn’t eat this!
Your mother is why I don’t trust eating other peoples food 😂😂😂 please don’t use it it’s got weevils
r/weeviltime
I don’t think I could use it knowing they had been in there. I’m okay if they were there and no one told me about it. I know silly isn’t it
Just fyi, go through every dry good in your pantry to find and remove the infected products then clean all the shelves in that area and dust with diatomaceous earth to kill any lingering bugs and prevent their larva from surviving.
If there’s not a lot left I’d just get a new bag but you can sift and use it immediately if you want to.
This is why I freeze my flour
Don’t you know that in the service we must choose the lesser of two weevils?
Those are weevils. Haven’t seen that in years.
Free proteins
Horror story about these exact bugs: when I was in high school, my grandmother bought a bag of Arthur’s organic wheat flour. A couple months later, we noticed these fuckers were everywhere.. in the closets, in lampshades, in the bed, in all crevices of kitchen surfaces. They were even in our spice cabinet— we were shaking the spices with them inside for weeks without knowing. We finally look at the flour in the back of the closet, and it has dozens of perfectly eaten holes throughout the bag. My mom opened it up and there must have been a couple hundred or so just squirming around. THROW. IT. OUT!!!
Once when I was 12 my two friends slept over and we were making pancakes the next morning and I saw some of these in the box but got so embarrassed that instead of telling them, I went to great lengths to try to hide it. I made the pancakes and served them and then pretended to eat mine. I never told a soul until now.
These aren’t weevils but either drugstore beetles or cigarette beetles.
OP, the flour is the least of your concern. You and your mom and anyone else in your household need to go through every dry goods in your house.
These bugs you see are the last stage of this beetle, there are probably more hiding and also lots of eggs and larvae.
Please check: rice, pasta, flour, herbs & spices, cereal, ….anything that has been opened and you find bugs or eggs inside, you need to toss.
Get out the vacuum cleaner and go to town on every little crevice, nook & cranny. And check behind any cupboard as well. Spray bug spray in these nooks & crannies at night and in the morning you’ll probably see a bunch of dead beetles.
These beetles are not to mess with!
sift and use.
worked for a company that manufactures bread for McDonald’s. we’d see this shit all the time whenever they’d take unloading samples for us to assess.
if you eat bread anywhere, I guarantee they’ve sifted and used. especially the organic stuff.
edit: anywhere that you’ve eaten MANUFACTURED bread.
Do I know that all flour already likely contains bugs? Yes. BUT I can pretend it doesn’t. There ain’t no pretending they aren’t in this bag 😭
They’re flour weevils they’re harmless.
You’ve eaten tens of thousands of them over the years hence why your mom said it’s okay.
They’re in the flour there isn’t flour without these little guys and their eggs.
It’s not caused by lack of sanitation they’re just in the flour and the flour was left alone.
Throw that out and clean out your cabinets.
Just sift them out. It’s still safe to use the flour.
I’ll just add that if it were me.. I’d just throw it away and get a new bag. But I have the means to do that. If you don’t, it’s okay, it is still safe to eat.
I would toss it – but you really would be fine sifting and using this.
Everyone in the comments is fixated on their being dead bug parts and eggs leftover…
But where do we think these came from to begin with? They didn’t materialize out of nowhere.
I learned from this sub to start freezing all my stuff now before I store in air tight containers because of these guys!
My mom taught me to put bay leaves in my flour to the wevils out. I buy flour in the 25# bags and put in 5 gallon buckets with sealing lids. I usually put 3 or 4 bay leaves. I’m 62 years old. I’ve been doing this since in my 20’s. Never had a wevil.
Weevils
Drugstore beetles?
I’ve been battling them for fucking years. Everything is now in airtight containers. Open a bag of chips? Store it in a ziploc bag. Etc.
I found them in a fucking closed BBQ spice container though. 😭 but besides that and a thing of dog treats, I can’t find the fucking source. I swear there’s something in the far reaches of the attic that is keeping them going.
This is why my grandma never let me lick the bowl. This happened all the time when she was young. During the depression, there was no extra money to chuck flour because of a few bugs. Sift them out, cook it well.
I really wish I could unread some of these comments. This whole feed was a trap😶
Flour weevils. Its safe to eat, in fact, if it werent safe to eat none of us would be here. These guys are the og reason for sifting flour.
they look to be having the time of thier life atleast 😂
Weavals
[These flour beetles are the insects that will survive a nuclear disaster.](https://onlineentomology.ifas.ufl.edu/will-cockroaches-outlive-humans/#:~:text=In%20the%20interest%20of%20science,the%20myth%20was%20declared%20busted)
They’ve survived 100,000 rad exposures (10x cockroaches).
This is why I don’t attend potlucks. Or accept gifts of food.
I absolutely came to the wrong sub at the wrong time 😳
yeah that’s a big no!
In my experience it’s best to choose the lesser of two weevils.
This is why I freeze my flour before I use it.
When I was a kid we would just sift out the weevils and still use the flour. They don’t carry any diseases, so not much to worry about.
If I can physically see it, I couldn’t go through with baking it and then eating it. I am aware there are bugs in our peanut butter and other foods we are unaware of. I just don’t want to see it.
weevils, they’re fine. Sift the flour and go wild
Do you live in a hot or humid city? If you had it on a pantry check everything around it those damn bugs spread like wild fire, I always store flour on the fridge since I once had this happen and had to throw out a ton of spices and various flours
Weevils! Use airtight containers or pit your flour in the fridge or freezer. You can just sift this batch.