No, sniffing your food will not cure food poisoning

Reading time: 2 minutes – spotted Conversation

In your fridge, some foods that have been stored (too) for a long time look suspicious to you. Then you decide to trust your sense of smell to avoid food poisoning…know that there is a good chance that you will make a mistake.

This is what a microbiologist reveals in an article Posted on ConversationAnd demystify this received idea and give advice.

Germs that can make me sick have no smell.

To check if a chicken that had been in his fridge for several days was still edible, Matthew Gilmore surprised himself with a fairly common reaction: he decided to smell the meat, looking for a suspicious smell. Only here he knows that this habit is not used very often. “I should know better than anyone because I am a microbiologist, and I know that germs that can make me sick have no smell. And yet here I am, trying and failing to reassure myself with that good old test.He reveals in his article.

While some microbes and bacteria can give off specific odors when their colonies expand, Listeria and Salmonella – the two major foodborne pathogens – are undetectable thanks to sniff test. When they are present in food, they are not much, which makes them almost indistinguishable by our nose.

Anti-milk example

But there are certain cases where sniff test It can be useful, such as knowing if a milk bottle has exploded. If it has been stored improperly (out of the refrigerator as soon as it has been opened) or is out of date (usually more than seven days), it may smell bad.

According to the microbiologist, it is “Another job for the microbes that gnaw on the product.” In this particular case, sniff test It can be useful to avoid food waste. However, for cheese, the work of smelly microbes is interesting in the culinary field, the specialist recalls.

In order to reduce the risk of finding yourself in front of your fridge doubting the freshness of food, it is best to review your consumption habits. This can be done through simple things like paying attention to expiration dates or even making sure we will have time to consume the products we buy.