Onions

If supermarkets did not insist on uniform size onions one could buy smaller onions and this problem would not arise. An onion farmer here in East Anglia has had to pack up after many years because most of his crop did not conform to the "right" size.

Before I believe or pass on anything like this I always check either on snopes or just put the general info in my search engine. Nearly always a hoax

I also keep unused parts of onions and other veg in the fridge. I bought some cheddar cheese packed in waxed paper from Waitrose which said "once opened consume within 7 days". By wrapping it in the same paper after use I kept it for three months. I don't eat much cheddar cheese.

I have always stored part-used onion in the fridge - wrapped of course. I'm still here and so are all of the family, haven't killed anyone off with it yet. It's all tosh I say! We also use other cut veg eg peppers that have gone a bit sloppy on the edges and aren't crisp enough for salads. Trim off the edge and use them in casseroles or soup. (And I trim the mould off cheese )

There are lots of folk takes about onions including keep a cut onion in your fridge to absorb smells and keep it fresh but don't ask me how that's meant to work. My grandmother, by turns, would extol the onion for its virtue in a sick room (absorbing the germs) and would warn us to avoid onions at all costs because the are seething with germs! We just carried on eating onions and have survived so far

Is there an onion marketing board putting put this rubbish to get us to throw away our halves? We need to remember that a bit of bacteria enforces our immune system & I have never seen an inquest report that a person died by onion poisoning. Mind you a couple of years ago My OH informed me that I had a lot of onions stored in the garage - they were tulip bulbs!

i always keep half onion in a little covered pot in the fridge - no problems over many years - just scaremongering.

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.

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.

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 :-)

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

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".

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!

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.

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

Is Lakeland putting the nation's health at risk?

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

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.

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

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.

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

Daddima Snopes is excellent!

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.

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

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.

That second "is" crept in uninvited.