It’s been a while – about two years since my last post, but that’s quite handy, as it’s a good point to revisit the Fandabi Bannock experiment. For those unfamiliar, Tom Langhorne, AKA Fandabi Dozi,, who does ~17th Century Scottish survival videos and the like, came up with his own attempt at a survival ration that would keep you going through long days in the hills, survive a long time in storage, and be at least reasonably palatable.
See my previous post for the details, but a brief summary: I made some, they’re not the most delicious thing ever, but perfectly edible, and definitely fill you up. Then I took a few, tied them up in greaseproof paper, and left them on a shelf in my home workshop. Unrefrigerated. For two years. I’ll let Tom explain a the end of his video.
So long story short, are they still edible? I’m not eating them, I’m not that committed, but I do have access to petri dishes and nutrient agar for growing microbes.
First, a few microbiology notes: the setup I’m using specifically avoids growing most human pathogens, including most of the main culprits in food poisoning. Not taking that risk in my own home, not trained to that level anyway. But it does allow us to get a rough idea of how hospitable the bannocks are to other microorganisms.
Unwrapping the bannocks there was no obvious sign on mould or bacterial growth. Nothing visual, no smell, nothing had gone soggy, squishy or otherwise icky. And they were still solid enough to use as a defensive projectile at a push.
I picked one at random and used a sterile cotton bud dipped in sterile water to sample a few points on the exterior. Then I snapped it in half an took a few samples from the inside in the same way. Each was used to inoculate one half of a petri dish containing a standard nutrient agar.
When we do this kind of “environmental sampling” with high school students, testing light switches and phones and the like, we normally incubate the dishes for 48-72 hours and get decent, often very funky results. This though? Almost nothing. I left it a full 5 days just to get a reasonably clear photo.
This is the exterior sample (control left, sample right). I’m pretty sure the black stuff is some sort of mould. Not a particularly heavy growth from the length of time it incubated for though.
This is the interior. Basically nothing. A tiny patch of what appears to be the same mould as the exterior, and moulds do tend to like getting their little tendrils all up in stuff.
So the obvious question: would I eat it? At the moment, no, because I’m on holiday and would like to enjoy it without getting the squits from an experiment I’m not being paid for!
But more generally, if I was out in the hills and knackered and 24 hours from anywhere, probably. It’s mostly dry carbs and solid fat, plus some dried fruit sugars, there’s very little that a harmful microbe is going to get excited about. They’ve been stored aerobically (i.e. oxygen can get in) which tends to inhibit some of the nastier ones like botulism. Moulds and fungus can still mess up your day (see ergot for example, common on rye in damp conditions, and having an effect like an unpleasant version of LSD), so I’m not saying this is safe by any means…but it’s not obviously dodgy from this very limited bit of microbiology.
You’d definitely be at greater risk if you licked a random mobile phone all over.
[POSTSCRIPT: Oddly, a few minutes after posting this, I glanced at my YouTube feed to find a short on just how much ergot can mess you up. That’s not what I found, but it’s a salutory lesson to never trust a fungus unless you’re sure.]
