Onions

Wind up I would say! Although I may be corrected on that. I never throw half an onion away.

Well, you have to wrap it in cling film anyway. Or the whole fridge contents would pong. It's rubbish. (And I would have thought nothing could live on garlic!)

I have read that onions exposed to the air will attract bacteria/germs. We keep halves in the fridge with cling film on and have had no ill effects.

I keep half an onion but its usually in a small plastic pot.. sounds like rubbish to me.

Another internet scare!

www.snopes.com/food/tainted/cutonions.asp

Snopes is your friend.

Why would a cut onion or garlic "attract" more bacteria than anything else with a cut wet surface? Is the fridge is swarming with onion-seeking bacteria frantically rushing round looking for a fix? Covered and used as soon as possible it will be fine. You wouldn't keep it i nthe fridge uncovered anyway, transferring the smell to the butter (which should also be covered . . . .)

How on earth did our parents and grandparents survive to produce us with all these health hazards that keep appearing from nowhere.

That second "is" crept in uninvited.

Even if they did absorb bacteria, surely they would all be killed off in the process of cooking, unless of course you like raw onions (I loathe them) in your salad.

When I worked in the boarding convent the housekeeper would no way allow a piece of onion to be kept ,once cut what wasn't needed was in the bin immediately , this was the eighties , she had been a domestic science teacher

My MIL used to say that if you put a plateful of chopped up onions out when you had been decorating, they would absorb the smell of the paint.
We only tried it once, we didn't it think it worked - there was an onion smell and a smell of paint. I think I prefer the smell of fresh paint to stale onions.

Daddima Snopes is excellent!

I was given an article about the dangers of onions and bacteria so just err on the side of caution.

The focus is all on onions, but surely if you leave ANY cut fruit or vegetable open to the air for more than a short time, the wet surface is going to be exposed to any bacteria that is around?

What is there about onions that they are being singled out?

And where do these warnings originate from? Is is old folklore revived or have onions been tested recently against other things?

Sorry to be picky, but I do like to get back to the source of claims that are going the rounds. Sometimes they seem to have started with a vague question somewhere on the net and then gathered momentum with no-one actually examining them. Snopes is pretty good at checking.

Sounds like the old wives' tale from a couple of generations ago. My nan used to say that putting a cut onion in a sickroom would aid recovery because it absorbed the germs. And this belief persists today - see this article

How about this from the Mayo clinic?

and if you have received an email about it, try this article (One comment was " . . it's amazing that the doctor was able to find the virus in the onion without an electron microscope, since they weren't invented until 1931."

or ink{http://www.hoax-slayer.com/onions-magnet-bacteria.shtmlwww.hoax-slayer.com/onions-magnet-bacteria.shtml this one} (a different email, but the same myth or hoax)

All the scientific or medical responses that i have seen say that it is rubbish.

I don't know whether it is a deliberate hoax or just people reviving an old wives tale from when there was no sure for a bacterial or viral illness, but when the smell of cut onions in the air may have got the patient's airways cleared a bit, so they thought the disease had been "attracted into the onion", but I for one intend to use up left-over half-onions - as I have always done.

You lot, of course, can do whatever you like with yours.

Is Lakeland putting the nation's health at risk?

www.lakeland.co.uk/17033/Onion-Fridge-Food-Saver

Maybe they know better than we do that it is all a myth!

Any fruit or vegetable that has been cut will attract bacteria, not to mention insects. In fact anything that's alive attracts bacteria and it wouldn't be alive if it didn't (we need most of the bacteria to be healthy). What a load of tosh.

I quite often have half a red onion in the fridge as I love cheese and red onion sandwiches but I couldn't eat a whole one! I usually have mine in a plastic bag with the air squeezed out and I cut off the dried out Bit on the end!

Trouble is that the internet is a fertile breeding ground for silly, unscientific, health stories. It would be funny if it did not encourage food waste.
The air is not full of bacteria with tiny wings (propellors?) whizzing around in search of something they want to land on. There are bound to be bacteria in the air - on tiny particles - that land randomly on anything and everything. If the thing provides food and water the bacterium might be able to breed. They then would normally need a certain amount of heat as well.
The air is also full of yeast and mould spores and it seems to be these that tend to make fruit and veg "go off".

And "going off" is only the start of the natural, happens anyway, composting process. It's how life works.

Hmmmm I'm stuffed then!!

I always have an onion that's part used in the fridge in my onion keeper and as long as it looks ok, I continue to use it as and when needed.

Now I've either been super lucky for 59 years or its rubbish :-)

When that article was circulating last year Snopes said there was no truth in it. So carry on keeping your onions for as long as you like.

I keep half onions in a sandwich bag in the fridge. I usually use them within a couple of days, if not I throw it out. Terry Pratchett wrote a book called "Monstrous Regiment", about girls dressed as men joining the army. Suspicion is aroused that they might be female, as one of them produces half an onion to add to the stock pot. The soldier remarking upon this says " what woman doesn't have half an onion about her".
We have never suffered any I'll effects from using a cut onion.