# Fending off chocolate worms



## siduri

I was cleaning out a cabinet where i keep my chocolate.  I know they always say chocolate doesn;t go bad, that it turns white but that doesn't mean anything, etc etc.  But nobody talks about chocolate worms. 

I'll often buy chocolate that i don;t use, then it slides to the back of the cabinet and I don;t see it and i buy more, because i like to have it on hand if i decide to make a cake, and there are types of chocolate here that i really like but are hard to find. 

I found some of my chocolate, still wrapped in its original foil and paper, untouched, with holes through the paper and foil, and through the chocolate itself, riddled with tiny drill-holes and little tiny pellets of, no doubt, worm droppings (larva droppings or whatever). 

Other than keeping it in the fridge (which i don;t like, since my fridge is packed with stuff (european fridges are small and i shop once a week) what can i do?


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## phatch

My understanding is this is hatched from the chocolate itself as food simply can't be perfectly pure. Refrigeration will slow it down a lot. But better just to buy the chocolate in amounts you'll use reasonably quickly. But as you say, you can't find all types all the time.

Certanily clean the cabinet well to eliminate that as a source of infection. I find it most often occurs in a chocolate with extras, usually nuts. so use those types of chocolate quickly.

You might bag the chocolate individually  so it doesn't spread from one to the other.


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## siduri

Thanks phatch

There was no chocolate with nuts.  I have found worms in that too, but those worms are larger, like the size of clothes moth larvae.  These are really tiny, never saw the worms themselves, just their holes, and little grains. 

Do you say that these can be in the chocolate itself, like something that was in the cocoa bean before grinding?  wouldn't they be killed in the process?  Anyway, i put the new bars in the freezer but have little enough space there - the rest i opened one by one and when i didn;t find any grains or holes, i wrapped in plastic and put in tupperware.  But i'm afraid that it;s enough that there;s one little egg and there goes the whole batch.  Gotta stop hoarding i guess.


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## beecher

What an awful thing to deal with! I've never heard of such a thing. This is what I found about it....

http://ohioline.osu.edu/hyg-fact/2000/2089.html


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## siduri

we have a lot of those moths, beecher, and i have them under control because they sell these very sticky cards with their pheronomes on them, and they stick to them.  Before that, i would just have to throw everything away every summer.  I guess it could be them, and that since chocolate is a harder denser substnace than crackers or cereal, so the holes they make are smaller, but the other thing is that in those starchy foods they always leave these spiderwebby things all over, and here in chocolate, there are just little tiny pellets. I never found an actual larva in the chocolate either so i don;t nknow how big they might be.


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## greyeaglem

The worms are white and about 1/4" long with a dark dot on the "face" end. I first brought these home in bird seed. I had to keep the seed in the refrigerator or a bunch of moths would fly out every time I took the lid off. Irradiated seed did not have these worms/moths. They get into everything, much like weevils. I have also gotten these in ramen noodle cup-of-soup containers. You will need to put everything you have in the way of flour, grains, dry beans or peas, pasta, drink mixes etc. in hard plastic or glass containers as they will eat through plastic bags and foil packets. Eventually they will die off when there's nothing left to eat. I don't have them around any more.


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