Many people might not lose sleep at night over the bag of flour they have in their pantry, but a new TikTok video with more than 11 million views as of Saturday might change that.
Just before Thanksgiving, TikToker @jennaliveswell posted a video that started sweet and festive. As holiday music played in the background, she opened a plastic, sealed container of flour. Then, her face revealed that something was wrong.
Her mouth dropped open, her eyes went wide, and the content creator swiftly grabbed her phone to show the source of her shock: tiny little bugs writhing in her flour. In a caption, she said that she had “so many questions,” about the scene before her eyes.
These five questions were:
1. “WHO TF R U?”
2. “where did you come [from]?”
3. “last time i used normal people flour was this time last year SO were they just chilling in my pantry all year??????”
4. “why did my container not prevent this?”
5. “did i buy already infested flour? if so, ew, do better flour companies”
Let’s work our way down the list.
First, Bryan Quoc Le, Ph.D. told Delish that the bugs @jennaliveswell found in her flour are called weevils. These tiny beetles with long, narrow snouts can be found in flour, grain, rice and more. Per the University of Minnesota Extension, bugs called “flour beetles” can also be found in flour and PennState Extension warns about even smaller “flour mites.”
Most dried food such as flour can be infested by some type of insect or pathogen. It’s even a (fictional) plot point of the HBO drama “The Last of Us”, in which a zombie-like plague is tied to a fungus infestation at a flour factory.
Second, the bugs may have been in the flour when it was purchased, or they could have got inside due to improper storage. Quoc Le said infestations are not always something that can be controlled because they can occur at multiple points during the retail journey of flour. Weevils can even lay eggs in wheat grains before those grains are turned into flour.
“Kernels that contain insects may pass visual inspection during processing, leading to the growth of weevils in the downstream product,” Quoc Le explained.
Third, WebMD said that the lifespan of a weevil is about one year, so it is possible the bugs were “just chilling” in the TikToker’s pantry for the past 12 months. Bon Appetit also noted that white flour begins to go rancid after about a year.
Fourth (and fifth), Quoc Le said that airtight containers made of glass, metal, or a strong plastic with no openings or cracks should keep out most weevil infestations. However, if the bugs are already in the flour, an airtight container will only prevent the bugs from spreading further into the pantry.
“Keep your pantry clean from any leftover flour that may have spilled,” to prevent spreading once weevils have been spotted, Quoc Le recommended.
For those who are feeling nervous about buying flour altogether after reading this, experts do have a suggestion for avoiding bug infestations – even if eggs are already in the flour. Quoc Le said freezing unopened new bags of flour for one week and then defrosting them can kill weevil eggs.
Alex Beggs of Bon Appetit also swears by keeping her flour in the fridge. She said that since running into flour mites, her collection of flours has been banished to airtight containers in the cool, dry realm of the fridge, never to see a cupboard or pantry again.
“If these are flours you really don’t think you’ll use that much but are excited to have for special occasions, you can store them in the freezer, too,” Beggs wrote.
If people do spot any pantry pests in their homes, the University of Minnesota Extension recommends throwing away contaminated food and thoroughly cleaning any areas where the food was stored. It also recommends checking packaging for tears or holes when buying dried food such as flour, keeping food storage areas clean with a vacuum cleaner and regularly throwing out old products.