Your Expired Pancake Mix Could Be Filled With Potentially Lethal Mold
When it’s Sunday morning and you reach for that box of pancake mix in the back of your pantry, you’re probably going to let it slide if you happen to notice it expired a while ago. After all, you need pancakes and, really, what’s the worst that can happen? Well, apparently you could die…from pancakes.
That’s the major takeaway from several case studies that detail the freaky stories of people who either died or had a close brush with death after using expired pancake mix.
One was published in the American Journal of Forensic Medical Pathology and covered the story of a 19-year-old man who had pancakes made from an opened pancake mix that was two years old. (Which, to be fair, most people wouldn’t think twice about using.) After he had two pancakes, the man went into anaphylaxis—a severe, life-threatening allergic reaction that can make it hard to breathe—and died. The mix was later tested and found to contain high level of different types of mold. Penicillin was one of them—and the man had a severe allergy to it.
Another case study published in the Annals of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology broke down the story of a 52-year-old woman who went into severe anaphylaxis on two totally different occasions after eating and inhaling cooking vapors from a pancake mix that was contaminated with dust mites. The woman ended up surviving.
And, for what it’s worth, there was once a Dear Abby column where a reader said her son “began having difficulty breathing and his lips turned purple” after eating what she later discovered was expired pancake mix. That teen also ended up being okay.
Moral of the story: It’s a good—and possibly life-saving—idea to check the expiration date on your pancake mix before you dive in. If it’s old, it’s really better to toss it rather than roll the dice. If you still need to have your pancake fix (fair), try making a homemade version. It’s easier than you think, and you can get on with your day without worrying about killing someone.
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