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To: PapaBear3625; Iron Munro
I wonder if putting it in the oven at 300 degrees for an hour, and then sealing it, would damage its nutritional value?

I found this online:
bean weevil, common name for a well-known cosmopolitan species of beetle (Acanthoscelides obtectus) that attacks beans and is thought to be native to the United States. It belongs to the family Bruchidae, the seed beetles. The bean weevil is small, about 1-6 in. (0.4 cm) long, and stout-bodied, with a short broad snout and shortened wing covers (elytra). The adults attack legumes either in storage or in the field and may even completely destroy them. The grubs, or larvae, hatch from eggs laid in holes that have been chewed by the female into stored beans or into pods in the field. In heavy infestations there may be two dozen or more newly hatched larvae in one bean. When full-grown, the larvae form pupae in the eaten-out cavity. As many as six generations are produced in a single season, and in storage breeding continues as long as there is available food left in the beans and a warm temperature. The larvae can be killed by fumigation or by heating the seeds to 145°F; (63°C;) for two hours. Bean weevils are classified in the phylum Arthropoda Arthropoda [Gr.,=jointed feet], largest and most diverse animal phylum. The arthropods include crustaceans, insects, centipedes, millipedes, symphylans, pauropodans, and the extinct trilobites. ..... Click the link for more information. , class Insecta, order Coleoptera, family Bruchidae.

So it looks like 2 hours at 145 is recommended. We'd need to know the bug type we are dealing with I guess. But I'll up my procedure to 2 hours at 170 and figure that will cover all bug types. And hopefully 170 won't damage the beans' nutritional quality. I have a bag of beans straight of the store in the frig to use for planting, since I figure the ones dried in the oven and stored w/o oxygen won't be sprouting!
86 posted on 03/14/2013 10:23:23 AM PDT by yorkiemom
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To: yorkiemom; PapaBear3625

Thanks to you both for responding to my post about the spoiled corn.

As I said, it was an experiment and I am glad I took that approach. It would be a disaster to put up several hundred pounds of corn in that fashion only to find it had gone bad when a disaster strikes.

I learned something out of the deal and it only cost $11 for the corn and a few more for the mylar bags.

Based on your inputs I will buy another bag of corn and treat half of it with the freezer method and the other half with the oven method and observe the results.

If I reach any conclusions I’ll post the results on one of these prepper threads.

Just for info purposes -
We have had a couple of weevil attacks in our pantry over the years. The weevils seemed to show up in pasta and rice more than other products.
An infestation renders a lot of foods inedible and takes a lot of work to clean up.
Now we try to process all grains and grain based products through the freezer before bringing them to the pantry.

Running products through the freezer isn’t difficult with the quantities we buy for normal use but becomes more involved when dealing with 50 pound sacks of grains.


106 posted on 03/14/2013 12:07:18 PM PDT by Iron Munro (I miss America, don't you?)
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