Frozen/Thawed/Refrozen Meat: How Much Is Safety, And How Much Is Taste?
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What You Can (And Can’t) Safely Do With Frozen Meat
Yesterday, we asked you:
❝You have meat in the freezer. How long is it really safe to keep it?❞
…and got a range of answers, mostly indicating to a) follow the instructions (a very safe general policy) and b) do not refreeze if thawed because that would be unsafe. Fewer respondents indicated that meat could be kept for much longer than guidelines say, or conversely, that it should only be kept for weeks or less.
So, what does the science say?
Meat can be kept indefinitely (for all intents and purposes) in a freezer; it just might get tougher: True or False?
False, assuming we are talking about a normal household electrical freezer that bottoms out at about -18℃ / 0℉.
Fun fact: cryobiologists cryopreserve tissue samples (so basically, meat) at -196℃ / -320℉, and down at those temperatures, the tissues will last a lot longer than you will (and, for all practical purposes: indefinitely). There are other complications with doing so (such as getting the sample through the glass transition point without cracking it during the vitrification process) but those are beyond the scope of this article.
If you remember back to your physics or perhaps chemistry classes at school, you’ll know that molecules move more quickly at higher temperatures, and more slowly at lower ones, only approaching true stillness as they near absolute zero (-273℃ / -459℉ / 0K ← we’re not saying it’s ok, although it is; rather, that is zero kelvin; no degree sign is used with kelvins)
That means that when food is frozen, the internal processes aren’t truly paused; it’s just slowed to a point of near imperceptibility.
So, all the way up at the relatively warm temperatures of a household freezer, a lot of processes are still going on.
What this means in practical terms: those guidelines saying “keep in the freezer for up to 4 months”, “keep in the freezer for up to 9 months”, “keep in the freezer for up to 12 months” etc are being honest with you.
More or less, anyway! They’ll usually underestimate a little to be on the safe side—but so should you.
Bad things start happening within weeks at most: True or False?
False, for all practical purposes. Again, assuming a normal and properly-working household freezer as described above.
(True, technically but misleadingly: the bad things never stopped; they just slowed down to a near imperceptible pace—again, as described above)
By “bad” here we should clarify we mean “dangerous”. One subscriber wrote:
❝Meat starts losing color and flavor after being in the freezer for too long. I keep meat in the freezer for about 2 months at the most❞
…and as a matter of taste, that’s fair enough!
It is unsafe to refreeze meat that has been thawed: True or False?
False! Assuming it has otherwise been kept chilled, just the same as for fresh meat.
Food poisoning comes from bacteria, and there is nothing about the meat previously having been frozen that will make it now have more bacteria.
That means, for example…
- if it was thawed (but chilled) for a period of time, treat it like you would any other meat that has been chilled for that period of time (so probably: use it or freeze it, unless it’s been more than a few days)
- if it was thawed (and at room temperature) for a period of time, treat it like you would any other meat that has been at room temperature for that period of time (so probably: throw it out, unless the period of time is very small indeed)
The USDA gives for 2 hours max at room temperature before considering it unsalvageable, by the way.
However! Whenever you freeze meat (or almost anything with cells, really), ice crystals will form in and between cells. How much ice crystallization occurs depends on several variables, with how much water there is present in the food is usually the biggest factor (remember that animal cells are—just like us—mostly water).
Those ice crystals will damage the cell walls, causing the food to lose structural integrity. When you thaw it out, the ice crystals will disappear but the damage will be left behind (this is what “freezer burn” is).
So if your food seems a little “squishy” after having been frozen and thawed, that’s why. It’s not rotten; it’s just been stabbed countless times on a microscopic level.
The more times you freeze and thaw and refreeze food, the more this will happen. Your food will degrade in structural integrity each time, but the safety of it won’t have changed meaningfully.
Want to know more?
Further reading:
You can thaw and refreeze meat: five food safety myths busted
Take care!
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The Bee’s Knees?
If you’d like to pre-empt that runny nose, some say that local honey is the answer. The rationale is that bees visiting the local sources of pollen and making honey will introduce the same allergens to you in a non allergy-inducing fashion (the honey). The result? Inoculation against the allergens in question.
But does it work?
Researching this, we found a lot of articles saying there was no science to back it up.
And then! We found one solitary study from 2013, and the title was promising:
But we don’t stop at titles; that’s not the kind of newsletter we are. We pride ourselves on giving good information!
And it turned out, upon reading the method and the results, that:
- Both the control and test groups also took loratadine for the first 4 weeks of the study
- The test group additionally took 1g/kg bodyweight of honey, daily—so for example if you’re 165lb (75kg), that’s about 4 tablespoons per day
- The control group took the equivalent amount of honey-flavored syrup
- Both groups showed equal improvements by week 4
- The test group only showed continued improvements (over the control group) by week 8
The researchers concluded from this:
❝Honey ingestion at a high dose improves the overall and individual symptoms of AR, and it could serve as a complementary therapy for AR.❞
We at 10almonds concluded from this:
❝That’s a lot of honey to eat every day for months!❞
We couldn’t base an article on one study from a decade ago, though! Fortunately, we found a veritable honeypot of more recent research, in the form of this systematic review:
Read: The Potential Use Of Honey As A Remedy For Allergic Diseases
…which examines 13 key studies and 43 scientific papers over the course of 21 years. That’s more like it! This was the jumping-off point we needed into more useful knowledge.
We’re not going to cite all those here—we’re a health and productivity newsletter, not an academic journal of pharmacology, but we did sift through them so that you don’t have to, and:
The researchers (of that review) concluded:
❝Although there is limited evidence, some studies showed remarkable improvements against certain types of allergic illnesses and support that honey is an effective anti-allergic agent.❞
Our (10almonds team) further observations included:
- The research review notes that a lot of studies did not confirm which phytochemical compounds specifically are responsible for causing allergic reactions and/or alleviating such (so: didn’t always control for what we’d like to know, i.e. the mechanism of action)
- Some studies showed results radically different from the rest. The reviewers put this down to differences that were not controlled-for between studies, for example:
- Some studies used very different methods to others. There may be an important difference between a human eating a tablespoon of honey, and a rat having aerosolized honey shot up its nose, for instance. We put more weight to human studies than rat studies!
- Some kinds of honey (such as manuka) contain higher quantities of gallic acid which itself can relieve allergies by chemically inhibiting the release of histamine. In other words, never mind pollen-based inoculations… it’s literally an antihistamine.
- Certain honeys (such as tualang, manuka and gelam) contain higher quantities of quercetin. What’s quercetin? It’s a plant flavonoid that a recent study has shown significantly relieves symptoms of seasonal allergies. So again, it works, just not for the reason people say!
In summary:
The “inoculation by local honey” thing specifically may indeed remain “based on traditional use only” for now.
But! Honey as a remedy for allergies, especially manuka honey, has a growing body of scientific evidence behind it.
Bottom line:
If you like honey, go for it (manuka seems best)! It may well relieve your symptoms.
If you don’t, off-the-shelf antihistamines remain a perfectly respectable option.
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Why We’re Called “10almonds”, And Other Questions
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It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!
Have a question or a request? You can always hit “reply” to any of our emails, or use the feedback widget at the bottom!
In cases where we’ve already covered something, we might link to what we wrote before, but will always be happy to revisit any of our topics again in the future too—there’s always more to say!
As ever: if the question/request can be answered briefly, we’ll do it here in our Q&A Thursday edition. If not, we’ll make a main feature of it shortly afterwards!
So, no question/request too big or small
❝Avid coffee drinker so very interested in the results Also question Is there something that you could take or eat that would prevent the caffeine from stimulating the kidneys? I tried to drink decaf from morning to night not a good result! Thanks❞
That is a good question! The simple answer is “no” (but keep reading, because all is not lost)
There’s no way (that we yet know of) to proof the kidneys against the stimulating effect of caffeine. This is especially relevant because part of caffeine’s stimulating effect is noradrenergic, and that “ren” in the middle there? It’s about the kidneys. This is just because the adrenal gland is situated next to them (actually, it’s pretty much sitting on top of them), hence the name, but it does mean that the kidneys are about the hardest thing in the body to have not effected by caffeine.
However! The effects of caffeine in general can be softened a little with l-theanine (found in tea, or it can be taken as a supplement). It doesn’t stop it from working, but it makes the curve of the effect a little gentler, and so it can reduce some unwanted side effects.
You can read more about l-theanine here:
❝How to jump start a inactive metabolism and keep it going? THANKYOU❞
The good news is, if you’re alive, your metabolism is active (it never stops!). So, it may just need perking up a little.
As for keeping it going, well, that’s what we’re here for! We’re all in favor of healthy longevity.
We’ll do a main feature soon on what we can do to influence our metabolism in either direction, but to give some quick notes here:
- A lot of our metabolism is influenced by genes and is unalterable (without modifying our genes, anyway)
- Metabolism isn’t just one thing—it’s many. And sometimes, parts of our metabolism can be much quicker or slower than others.
- When people talk about wanting a “faster metabolism”, they’re usually referring to fat-burning, and that’s just a small part of the picture, but we understand that it’s a focal point for many.
There really is enough material for a whole main feature on metabolic tweaks, though, so watch this space!
❝Why the name “10 Almonds?” Is this recommended by the Doctor? A daily dosage? And, if so, why? Thanks! Please answer me…I truly want to know!❞
Almonds are very nutritionally dense, and for example 20g of almonds (so, about 20 almonds) would give a 100% daily dose of zinc, amongst other nutrients.
We also do like to think that we give our readers an easily digestible dose of condensed “nutrition” in the form of health information.
However! That’s not actually the reason at all. It’s a reference to a viral Facebook hoax! There was a post going around that claimed:
❝HEADACHE REMEDY. Eat 10–12 almonds, the equivalent of two aspirins, next time you have a headache❞ ← not true!
It made us think about how much health-related disinformation there was circulating online! So, calling ourselves 10almonds was a bit of a nod to that story, but also a reminder to ourselves:
We must always publish information with good scientific evidence behind it!
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Xylitol vs Erythritol – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing xylitol to erythritol, we picked the xylitol.
Why?
They’re both sugar alcohols, which so far as the body is concerned are neither sugars nor alcohols in the way those words are commonly understood; it’s just a chemical term. The sugars aren’t processed as such by the body and are passed as dietary fiber, and nor is there any intoxicating effect as one might expect from an alcohol.
In terms of macronutrients, while technically they both have carbs, for all functional purposes they don’t and just have a little fiber.
In terms of micronutrients, they don’t have any.
The one thing that sets them apart is their respective safety profiles. Xylitol is prothrombotic and associated with major adverse cardiac events (CI=95, adjusted hazard ratio=1.57, range=1.12-2.21), while erythritol is also prothrombotic and more strongly associated with major adverse cardiac events (CI=95, adjusted hazard ratio=2.21, range=1.20-4.07).
So, xylitol is bad and erythritol is worse, which means the relatively “healthier” is xylitol. We don’t recommend either, though.
Studies for both:
- Xylitol is prothrombotic and associated with cardiovascular risk
- The artificial sweetener erythritol and cardiovascular event risk
Links for the specific products we compared, in case our assessment hasn’t put you off them:
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
- The WHO’s New View On Sugar-Free Sweeteners ← the WHO’s advice is “don’t”
- Stevia vs Acesulfame Potassium – Which is Healthier? ← stevia’s pretty much the healthiest artificial sweetener around, though, if you’re going to use one
- The Fascinating Truth About Aspartame, Cancer, & Neurotoxicity ← under the cold light of science, aspartame isn’t actually as bad as it was painted a few decades ago, mostly by a viral hoax letter. Per the WHO’s advice, it’s still good to avoid sweeteners in general, however.
Take care!
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Deskbound – by Kelly Starrett and Glen Cordoza
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We’ve all heard that “sitting is the new smoking”, and whether or not that’s an exaggeration (the jury’s out), one thing that is clear is that sitting is very bad.
Popular advice is “here’s how to sit with good posture and stretch your neck sometimes”… but that advice tends to come from companies that pay people to sit for a long time. They might not be the a very unbiased source.
Starrett and Cordoza offer better. After one opening chapter covering the multifarious ways sitting ruins our health, the rest of the book is all advice, covering:
- The principles of how the body is supposed to be
- The most important movements that we should be doing
- A dynamic workstation setup
- This is great, because “get a standing desk” tends to present more questions than answers, and can cause as much harm as good if done wrong
- The authors also cover how to progressively cut down on sitting, rather than try to go cold-turkey.
- They also recognize that not everyone can stand at all, and…
- Optimizing the sitting position, for when we must sit
- Exercises to maintain our general mobility and compensate about as well as we can for the body-unfriendly nature of modern life.
The book is mostly explanations, so at 682 pages, you can imagine it’s not just “get up, lazybones!”. Rather, things are explained in such detail (and with many high-quality medical diagrams) so that we can truly understand them.
Most of us have gone through life knowing we should have “better posture” and “move more”… but without the details, that can be hard to execute correctly, and worse, we can even sabotage our bodies unknowingly with incorrect form.
This book straightens all that out very comprehensively, and we highly recommend it.
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Strength training has a range of benefits for women. Here are 4 ways to get into weights
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Picture a gym ten years ago: the weights room was largely a male-dominated space, with women mostly doing cardio exercise. Fast-forward to today and you’re likely to see women of all ages and backgrounds confidently navigating weights equipment.
This is more than just anecdotal. According to data from the Australian Sports Commission, the number of women participating in weightlifting (either competitively or not) grew nearly five-fold between 2016 and 2022.
Women are discovering what research has long shown: strength training offers benefits beyond sculpted muscles.
John Arano/Unsplash Health benefits
Osteoporosis, a disease in which the bones become weak and brittle, affects more women than men. Strength training increases bone density, a crucial factor for preventing osteoporosis, especially for women negotiating menopause.
Strength training also improves insulin sensitivity, which means your body gets better at using insulin to manage blood sugar levels, reducing the risk of type 2 diabetes. Regular strength training contributes to better heart health too.
There’s a mental health boost as well. Strength training has been linked to reduced symptoms of depression and anxiety.
Strength training can have a variety of health benefits. Ground Picture/Shutterstock Improved confidence and body image
Unlike some forms of exercise where progress can feel elusive, strength training offers clear and tangible measures of success. Each time you add more weight to a bar, you are reminded of your ability to meet your goals and conquer challenges.
This sense of achievement doesn’t just stay in the gym – it can change how women see themselves. A recent study found women who regularly lift weights often feel more empowered to make positive changes in their lives and feel ready to face life’s challenges outside the gym.
Strength training also has the potential to positively impact body image. In a world where women are often judged on appearance, lifting weights can shift the focus to function.
Instead of worrying about the number on the scale or fitting into a certain dress size, women often come to appreciate their bodies for what they can do. “Am I lifting more than I could last month?” and “can I carry all my groceries in a single trip?” may become new measures of physical success.
Strength training can have positive effects on women’s body image. Drazen Zigic/Shutterstock Lifting weights can also be about challenging outdated ideas of how women “should” be. Qualitative research I conducted with colleagues found that, for many women, strength training becomes a powerful form of rebellion against unrealistic beauty standards. As one participant told us:
I wanted something that would allow me to train that just didn’t have anything to do with how I looked.
Society has long told women to be small, quiet and not take up space. But when a woman steps up to a barbell, she’s pushing back against these outdated rules. One woman in our study said:
We don’t have to […] look a certain way, or […] be scared that we can lift heavier weights than some men. Why should we?
This shift in mindset helps women see themselves differently. Instead of worrying about being objects for others to look at, they begin to see their bodies as capable and strong. Another participant explained:
Powerlifting changed my life. It made me see myself, or my body. My body wasn’t my value, it was the vehicle that I was in to execute whatever it was that I was executing in life.
This newfound confidence often spills over into other areas of life. As one woman said:
I love being a strong woman. It’s like going against the grain, and it empowers me. When I’m physically strong, everything in the world seems lighter.
Feeling inspired? Here’s how to get started
1. Take things slow
Begin with bodyweight exercises like squats, lunges and push-ups to build a foundation of strength. Once you’re comfortable, add external weights, but keep them light at first. Focus on mastering compound movements, such as deadlifts, squats and overhead presses. These exercises engage multiple joints and muscle groups simultaneously, making your workouts more efficient.
2. Prioritise proper form
Always prioritise proper form over lifting heavier weights. Poor technique can lead to injuries, so learning the correct way to perform each exercise is crucial. To help with this, consider working with an exercise professional who can provide personalised guidance and ensure you’re performing exercises correctly, at least initially.
Bodyweight exercises, such as lunges, are a good way to get started before lifting weights. antoniodiaz/Shutterstock 3. Consistency is key
Like any fitness regimen, consistency is key. Two to three sessions a week are plenty for most women to see benefits. And don’t be afraid to occupy space in the weights room – remember you belong there just as much as anyone else.
4. Find a community
Finally, join a community. There’s nothing like being surrounded by a group of strong women to inspire and motivate you. Engaging with a supportive community can make your strength-training journey more enjoyable and rewarding, whether it’s an in-person class or an online forum.
Are there any downsides?
Gym memberships can be expensive, especially for specialist weightlifting gyms. Home equipment is an option, but quality barbells and weightlifting equipment can come with a hefty price tag.
Also, for women juggling work and family responsibilities, finding time to get to the gym two to three times per week can be challenging.
If you’re concerned about getting too “bulky”, it’s very difficult for women to bulk up like male bodybuilders without pharmaceutical assistance.
The main risks come from poor technique or trying to lift too much too soon – issues that can be easily avoided with some guidance.
Erin Kelly, Lecturer and PhD Candidate, Discipline of Sport and Exercise Science, University of Canberra
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Egg Whites vs Whole Eggs – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing egg whites to whole eggs, we picked the whole eggs.
Why?
Egg whites are mostly protein. Egg yolks are mostly fat, with some protein.
However, fat ≠ bad, and the yolk is also where the choline is stored, which itself (as well as its benefits for your brain) will tend to reduce fat storage in the body.
Furthermore, the yolk contains an assortment of vitamins, minerals, and essential amino acids. After all, the yolk is there specifically to contain everything needed to turn a cluster of cells into a small bird.
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