If you store food items for long periods of time they develop 'worms'. Where do these come from?

Question

Any food item eg meat, flour etc kept for long goes bad and living worms appear, even in an airtight container. Where do these originate ?

Answer 1

The eggs were already in the product. The eggs lie dormant until the environment is right, and then they hatch.

Answer 2

Insects need to eat and lay eggs, and they use food to keep themselves alive. If you store meat in the fridge, and it has worms already in it, you'll have wormy meat. Gross. Toss it. If the meat animals were raised on farms, and killed and cleaned using good meat handling techniques, worms shouldn't be a problem. However, some meats contain worms that can live on and infect a human if the meat is not cooked to a hot enough temperature (that's one reason why meats should be well-done when eaten).

If you leave meat sitting on the counter and have flies in your house, the flies will land on the meat and sometimes lay eggs. Fly eggs hatch within hours!

Flour and other grain products are often infested with weavils or with moth larvae. Weavils crawl onto the grains while the grain is still in the field, and also in the packing houses.

Moths fly around and love to lay their eggs in people's houses. The eggs lie in the product and then hatch and the worm like larvae crawl throught the pantry and eat whatever they can: dry fruit, bags of cereal, flour, crackers, and so on. They mature within a few weeks, become moths, mate and lay more eggs.

I have often purchased sacks of flour at the grocery store, only to notice a month later the sack has larvae or weavels in it. I stick the sack in the freezer for a week to kill the bugs, then sift it when I go to use it (sifting works with a few bugs, if there are lots, I toss the food).Sometimes the weavels take over my pantry, so I clean everything out, wipe down the cabinets with a wet rag, and put all the food into jars, and freeze things. After a week in the freezer, I put flour back into the pantry.

Insects in food have plagued humanity forever. Trying to store food for the winter, yet have it bug-free is simply not possible for the common person.

Answer 3

hookworms produce eggs and if its beef its from a farm where worms live in the groud . Worms get in a cow's stomach some how so when cows get slaughter the still have worm egg's in them it will still be on the meat the longer it stays uncooked the bigger the worms get if cook it wilkl probaly die and wont be a problem so if you wanted good cook your meat before instaed of letting it sit in a freezer forever and so its quicker to make in the future

Answer 4

NOT HOOKWORMS, NOT FLIES but moths. definitely. use ABSOLUTELY airtight containers (the brutes can lay eggs in the crevice between lid and baby worms crawl inside, the moths can penetrate plastic foil easily - dont ask me how ) and use window mesh screens it u have a moth plague. and if u are afraid that it was conta¨minated before u purchased it (happens in case of birdseeds) put it in freezer for some time. in hot years there are alot moths. recently i bought a pheromone atractant sticky trap that works fine i put one in every cupboard and it is covered in moths. i can never control the parots-seed whatever i do

in meat it is fly larvae, ughhrr , throw it away NOW

Answer 5

The worm's eggs are already in the food before you store it, that is why if you boil or expose the food to radiation and kill all eggs the food last longer, that is call Pasteurization, see Pasteur in any search engine hi discovered this long time ago.

Answer 6

Contrary to our ancestors belief...the worms do not just generate out of thin air (spontaneous generation). they are fly larvae so basically, if your food has worms, you left it out in the open too long!

Answer 7

that was exactly the subject of Francesco Redi's experiment(1621-1697) ... he discovered that these worms come from the egg of those fly's which are flying overthere

Answer 8

from the flies that are attracted by the food. flies come and eat some of your food (but you can't tell cause they can't eat much) and leave their eggs on it. worms come from those eggs.

Answer 9

they come from the air... microorganisms penetrate on the food and worms form.

Answer 10

I have no idea mate but maybe its time to clean out your cupboards angel hehehe...