AS food prices continue to rise, it’s no wonder many of us are trying to make our produce last longer.
But health experts have warned that a viral TikTok food storage hack could be putting your health in danger, as it creates a breeding ground for deadly bacteria.
AlamyHealth experts have warned that submerging your avocados in water can create the perfect environment for deadly bacteria to grow[/caption]
Avocados are notoriously tricky – buy them ripe and they’ll go brown within days, but buy them hard and you’ll wait ages for them to soften.
That’s why a TikTok storage hack that supposedly extended their window of ripeness gained sudden popularity.
The app filled with videos people submerging their avocados in cold water, allowing them to be stored in the fridge for weeks at a time.
Advocates of the hack said doing this slowed the oxidisation process and even worked when the fruit had been halved.
But health experts have warned that you could be putting your health at risk if you store avocados this way.
IBS consultant dietitian Kirsten Jackson told the Sun that there may be traces of harmful microbes on the skins of avocados.
“Generally this is not seen to be a huge risk,” she said.
“When you submerge the avocado into water it provides the ideal breading ground for things like salmonella or listeria that were on the avocado skin to multiply rapidly.”
It’s not just handling the avocado that can put your health at risk.
“These pathogens not only stay on the skin of the avocado but also can move inside the fruit, which means when we eat them that would become very sick,” the dietitian warned.
Salmonella is a bacterium that causes food poisoning and can make you seriously ill – though most people do recover without treatment.
Symptoms of salmonella caused sickness include diarrhoea, stomach cramps and sometimes vomiting or fever.
In extreme cases, sufferers might need to be hospitalised due to severe dehydration brought on by the illness.
You usually get it from eating contaminated food – salmonella bacteria live in the gut of many farm animals and can affect meat, eggs, poultry and milk. Other foods like green vegetables, fruit and shellfish can become contaminated through contact with manure in the soil or sewage in the water.
Eating these foods will only make you sick in rare cases.
Meanwhile, listeria bacteria can cause a rare infection called listeriosis.
Though it’s seldom lethal in health adults, listeriosis it can be fatal for newborns, pregnant women, people over 65, and those with compromised immune systems.
Eating inadequately prepared deli meats and unpasteurized milk products are the most common causes of the illness, whose symptoms include a high temperature, body aches, chills, vomiting and diarrhoea.
Kirsten had a few more food related warnings.
1. Don’t wash your meat
“You should never wash meat,” she stressed.
While cooking it appropriately will kill of the microbes in it, washing it means “harmful bacteria will be spread all over the sink, increasing the risk of food poisoning”.
2. Cool food before putting in fridge
Kirsten went on: “You should not put warm things in the fridge as this can increase the temperature of the fridge, allowing bacteria to grow.”
3. Don’t defrost meat on counter
Finally, the dietitian said that meat should always be defrosted in the fridge.
“It keeps the meat at a temperature which makes it difficult for harmful bacteria to grow,” Kirsten explained.
“But most people defrost their meat on the side in their kitchen.”
A food scientist recently shared three surprising foods that could give you food poisoning.