Power outage during your vacation: a virologist reveals her trick to find out if your freezer is full of bacteria!

The summer season marked the beginning of vacation departures. But before taking the car, it is important to check a few details and put in place some little tricks to check if everything went well when you return. A virologist rightly pointed out the importance of knowing if there has been a power outage that could have affected the temperature of your freezer. In question ? This could increase the proliferation of bacteria. Here is the trick to leave quietly.

Océane Sorel regularly shares her advice via on the Instagram page. Recently, she revealed her trick for know if the temperature of your freezer has remained the same despite your absence for the holidays. A method that may seem innocuous but which is nevertheless important: “Freezing does not kill bacteria: it just puts them to sleep. You have to imagine that it’s as if you had put the time on hold for a bit and that at the slightest opportunity, when the temperature conditions become ideal for them, they will resume their little life as bacteria and multiply”. This is why it is imperative that your freezer remains at the right temperature when you leave.

The specialist warns that you could get sick : “If you have a power outage while on vacation, after a few hours the contents of your freezer will thaw, then refreeze when the power comes back on (unbeknownst to you if you’re away) which poses a risk of food poisoning”.

Why is the risk so important? Quite simply becausewhen the food has frozen, thousands of ice crystals have formed inside which will have damaged the structure of the food a little and when the food thaws, the bacteria will take advantage of this destructuring to be able to access easily to the food they need. Thawing serves them a menu on a silver platter. Then when the food is going to refreeze, then the freezing will not be instantaneous and will take time, several hours even and it is as many hours during which the bacteria will remain “active” and take advantage of it to continue to proliferate! It’s a double jeopardy!”

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A publication shared by Océane Sorel DVM, PhD. (@thefrenchvirologist)

To avoid this, Océane Sorel has shared a very simple trick to check if there has been a power outage or not during your absence. Just freeze a bottle filled with water. Once frozen, turn it over. If you find water in the cap, then the ice will have melted otherwise it means that there was no problem in your absence and that the cold chain was respected!