preventing weavils

I'm not a food expert, but I understand that freezing kills the eggs of any little critters in the flour, and that all flour contains those eggs which will eventually hatch if not killed. I always put newly-purchased flour in zipper-style freezer bags and store them in the freezer until I need to open a new bag, and don't have problems with anything hatching and crawling around in flour. On those occasions I am out of flour and need to purchase more for immediate use, I don't freeze but simply use the new bag of flour, and have never notices any difference in the final product.

WHOAH! weavils? new to baking - and new to florida - this one caught my attention. first, to the dictionary:

weevil \Wee"vil\, n. [OE. wivel, wevil, AS. wifel, wibil; akin to OD. wevel, OHG. wibil, wibel, G. wiebel, wibel, and probably to Lith. vabalas beetle, and E. weave. See Weave.] (Zo["o]l.) Any one of numerous species of snout beetles, or Rhynchophora, in which the head is elongated and usually curved downward. Many of the species are very injurious to cultivated plants. The larv[ae] of some of the species live in nuts, fruit, and grain by eating out the interior, as the plum weevil, or curculio, the nut weevils, and the grain weevil (see under Plum, Nut, and Grain). The larv[ae] of other species bore under the bark and into the pith of trees and various other plants, as the pine weevils (see under Pine). See also Pea weevil, Rice weevil, Seed weevil, under Pea, Rice, and Seed.

THERE'S LIVESTOCK IN GROCERY FLOUR?! Killed by freezing or not, won't we still be eating organic dead stuff? I was going to buy unground whole grain and start from there. What will I find THERE?

Weave.]

Ever eat a hamburger? It's made of dead matter. So is Boston cream pie. So is an organic health salad.

People don't complain much about cheese, as long as they don't know how it's made. The same goes for yeast and sour dough breads, which rise thanks to the respiratory labors of living beasties that die during cooking... but are still there.

The same insect life you find in milled wheat and milled corn is also present in unmilled grains, fruits and veggies, meats and milk products, etc. What you really should do is a little research on insect consumption. It's estimated that an average person inadvertently eats over a pound of insects in a lifetime. And then there's the wholly different subject of intentional insect consumption. Either way, the term for it is Entomophagy.

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Sorry to break the news. Commercially milled flour is extremely clean but it it isn't perfectly clean. There are standards which hold contamination to a miniscule but measurable level. Quoting from one government standard:

5.3 Filth test. All tests required to determine compliance with the provisions of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act in regard to insects, insect fragments, rodent hairs, rodent excreta, and other filth shall be made in accordance with the Official Methods of Analysis of the AOAC International or the Approved Methods of the American Association of Cereal Chemists.

Here's an interesting discusion which, if your squeamish, you probably don't want to read:

There is a saying in the computer reliability biz that the number of rat hairs per bushel of wheat isn't ZERO. This is intended to be a rather graphic way of explaining that almost nothing is really perfect, and that small defects exist almost everywhere. CAUTION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! If you like eating bread you might not want to read this.

A great deal of effort goes into measuring the amount of extraneous material contained in flour so that it can be kept to a level which is neither biologically nor aesthetically harmful. Here is a detailed description of the analytical techniques specified by the government of Canada (in Adobe PDF format). Pardon the long URL:

This method is applicable to the sampling and examination of white wheat flour for insects, rodent hairs and other extraneous material to determine compliance with Sections 4, 5 and 7 of the Food and Drugs Act.

On a much more pleasant level, here is a nice little essay by Roger B. Swain, the science editor of Horticulture magazine and the host of "The Victory Garden" on PBS television.

... we might as well invoke the old American proverb, "You have to eat a peck" -- or pint or bushel -- "of dirt before you die." It refers, of course, to eating one's words and other such embarrassments. But it serves just as well at mealtime.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to wash my hands thoroughly and sift my flour just one more time...

Cheers, The Old Bear

i can live with a pound of inseccts in a lifetime, but if they're alive and well in day-to-day flour, well that supercededes the quota...

Ah, they just increase the protien level of the flour. But not by so much as to turn cake flour into AP or anything. I live in Panama City, FL, and my problem is with tiny moths boreing through my ZipLoc bags and placing larvae in my flour. When they spin their cocoons, they leave spider-webby crap all in it. Also in my poppy seeds, rice, anything that is a grain and contains any fat whatsoever. I do not recommend plastic zip bags. I recommend a large, airtight, thick-walled container like a 5-gallon bucket, into which you can place all your little bags of grains.