Mycotoxins: The Danger in Your Food

By Terrance Franklin


There comes a time in each and every person's life when we leave the house and start learning the way to reside by themselves. An inevitable element of this quest is leaving food items unprotected in the refrigerator or kitchen pantry for too long, making something that looks like it came from a science fiction movie and smells like it came from a horror movie. What you are witnessing is mold, that may possess some critical consequences on your decision of survival foods.

The reason that mold emits a smell so terrible is mainly because different molds give out various types of chemicals through their metabolic process. Most of these are poisons referred to as mycotoxins. Penicillin, the very first great anti-biotic is a mycotoxin, incredibly fatal to bacteria which it would compete with for food. But additionally, there are toxins affecting people.

One of the most common is a mold referred to as fusarium. Fusarium, like many molds, lives in dark, damp areas which is why it shows up in several grains. Whenever grains are in silage, as they are in large agrobusiness farms, it is the perfect condition for molds such as Fusarium to develop. Studies have shown that almost all corn and an adequate amount of wheat in the US has detectable levels of tricothecenes, the mycotoxin made by fusarium mold.

What can you do?

Is it truly so terrible though? What's wrong with a little mold? Well firstly, it is fatal to the point of being used as a form of biological warfare. Tricothecenes have been used repeatedly in the 20th century with harmful results. During the cold war, tricothecenes under the code name 'Yellow Rain' were chosen by the Soviet Union to bring about the deaths of countless numbers in Southeast Asia.

Make no mistake, they are poisons of the very potent sort. Very small amounts have shown to result in complications ranging from kidney damage to cancer. Plus they are present in plenty of the grain eaten nowadays. The capability to detect mycotoxins has existed ever since the mid 1980s however studies have shown contamination in food globally. For something that could cause consequences on micrograms per day, there are quantities as high as milligrams for each kilogram present in grain all over the earth.

What can you do

As a prepper, there are actions to take in order to avoid releasing the toxins into your life, ranging from light to extreme. Setting out, it is advisable to ensure that you store grains (and all sorts of food items) perfectly. Vacuum sealing and using oxygen absorbers is important. The next thing will be to prevent getting grain from bulk manufactured farms. The larger the operations, a lot more likely it is to keep grain in silage.

And for people ready to take it to the max, the ultimate action is eliminating whole grains from the preparations. It is yet another vote for homesteading, food you cultivate yourself will be fresh. In case your grains get contaminated (or already are infected) storage is not likely to make them better. A certain amount of the toxins could turn a life sustaining staple in a dangerous poison.




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