I’m just some guy who has started to like sous vide, far from an expert on it and even further from being a medical professional. Botulism seems to come up on this sub a lot so I very briefly looked into it and the CDC reported a total of 19 foodborne cases of botulism in the US in 2019, 3 deaths. Are there multiple types of botulism and the cdc link I included is a different one or something? Maybe my sense of scale is off but feels like an absurdly low number for something brought up so frequently in this sub. Just curious if anyone could shed some light on how botulism has become such a hot topic here? Feels like it is more of a boogeyman than a real threat.
Not advocating for people doing things that would put themselves at greater risk of getting botulism, just feel like I am missing something here.
by torporificent
12 Comments
It’s an exceptionally low risk, as you note from the number of cases. I’m a physician and have never seen a case in my years of training or practice
Would you rather eat food that has no chance of botulism or food that has just a little chance of botulism?
Botulism is rare because we’re aware of it and it’s relatively easy to prevent it. Cook your food to normal temperatures and don’t handle it in weird ways. Normally, that’s enough. Sous vide is somewhat in violation of both parts of that: it isn’t cooked to normal temperatures, and it is handled in weird ways, with a sealed container without oxygen. So it kinda makes sense that there’s extra concern.
It’s low probability but high impact (death) so the risk is moderately high. C botulinum is very common in soil, and there’s actually a decent chance your food came in contact with it. It only thrives in specific environments though, and does not thrive in most cooking situations. Certain cooking situations are problematic like sous vide, canning, honey, and jerky.
Good news is if you do enough Botox injections, you can become immune to the botulism toxin! Bad news is your injections will cost a lot more for the alternatives
avoid raw shit-covered duck eggs, and if you don’t want to avoid them, be careful cracking them so the whites don’t dribble across the duck shit. don’t ask how i know this.
As someone who had a past life studying and manufacturing botulinum toxin in a university lab and at scale for a pharmaceutical company, everyone needs to understand that botulism is no joke. Once you see a mouse which has the toxin injected into it die a horrible death after 15 minutes you would understand. It is something that is not worth taking a risk over.
Clostridium species are pretty common in soil but the chances of finding a strain which is a big toxin producer is fairly low but since it takes nanograms of toxin to cause illness, it doesn’t leave much margin for error.
Fortunately, it is pretty easy to control and reduce the overall risk of intoxication with simple controls like the correct time and temperature and correct acid levels. Many botulism cases come from improper sterilization and formulation of home canned foods.
The FDA guidelines , the “safe zone”, are aimed at preventing all food borne illnesses.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that 48 million Americans get sick from foodborne illnesses each year, with 128,000 hospitalizations and 3,000 deaths.”
Coming at this from the perspective of someone who ferments a lot: the botulism risk of sous vide cooking is virtually nonexistent, with the notable exception of using a sous vide for canning.
Botulism is only problematic because it survives in environments that other pathogens do not, which is why it’s commonly discussed in canning and longer fermentation (esp. involving honey). This matches the data quite closely: almost all of the cases of botulism poisoning are from improperly handled home canning operations. Since canning is a pretty common use of the sous vide, botulism is frequently brought up among sous vide users, but it’s not something that you should be especially concerned with for your standard cooks in a sous vide.
Anything that you do in sous vide cooking is exceptionally unlikely to introduce botulism *before* you introduce something like E. coli to make you sick, so following your typical food safety intuition (keep things in the fridge and wash your veggies) will take care of you perfectly well.
If it helps ease your mind, botulism poisoning presents symptoms when it’s still treatable, so if you know what to look for (trouble swallowing and speaking, mild paralysis) then you can go to a hospital, tell them what’s happened, and get treated fairly reliably. This is (one of) the reason(s) it’s mostly a concern for infants: they can’t tell something is wrong, adults often notice.
> Maybe my sense of scale is off but feels like an absurdly low number for something brought up so frequently in this sub
News to me. I’ve never heard of anyone talking about botulism in regards to SV. I hear about it in r/fodmaps frequently because people make their own garlic oil there and that can produce botulism toxin (that’s why you freeze it).
Because a large percentage of this sub’s commenters are clueless.
Its gotta be rare. I’ve been making jerky an sousing meats for years. Don’t be an idiot
It is stupid low with refrigeration. First you need spores in the cooked food, assuming the bacteria was killed. That is low probability to begin with. Then you need temperature and time for the spores to spawn and grow. Some types can spawn at around 38F which is bordering on fridge temps. Then the bacteria actually need to grow and actually need to produce the toxin.
It IS the reason why canned foods (canning) are heated to like 240 degF in a pressure cooker and are shelf-safe. The spores die around 220-230 degF and canned food is held in the very comfy temp of 60-80 degF were it would go wild and kill us all.