Yuri
Active Member
- Joined
- Oct 29, 2019
- Messages
- 31
- Reaction score
- 4
Over the years I have seen so many people come and go, saying that freezing fruit is a way to sanitise it. Believe a mircobiologist here, when I say this is not true in the slightest.
Look at the article Walker 2006 Freeze-Thaw Tolerance and Clues to the Winter Survival of a Soil Community. While in some bacteria, like E. coli, viability decreases more quickly with being frozen and thawed, you can see in the graph that it still takes almost 15 cycles freezing for 24-48 hours and thawing again to even see a significant decrease in viability. Microbiologists use freezing all the time to preserve bacteria in a sample, sometimes up to 15 years.
If you have fruit and you are afraid of contamination because of bacteria on this fruit, freezing it once isn't going to do anything for you. You can rinse the fruit in star san or add sulfites to the mix some 48 hours prior, but don't expect to be safe from freezing.
I'm begging you.
Look at the article Walker 2006 Freeze-Thaw Tolerance and Clues to the Winter Survival of a Soil Community. While in some bacteria, like E. coli, viability decreases more quickly with being frozen and thawed, you can see in the graph that it still takes almost 15 cycles freezing for 24-48 hours and thawing again to even see a significant decrease in viability. Microbiologists use freezing all the time to preserve bacteria in a sample, sometimes up to 15 years.
If you have fruit and you are afraid of contamination because of bacteria on this fruit, freezing it once isn't going to do anything for you. You can rinse the fruit in star san or add sulfites to the mix some 48 hours prior, but don't expect to be safe from freezing.
I'm begging you.
