Hurricane Harvey: Nifty Coin Trick Can Alert To Food Spoilage After Power Outage

AUSTIN, TX — An untold number of Texans are hunkered down this weekend, afraid to emerge from their homes amid the effects of Hurricane Harvey. But eventually, people will need to leave the house to go to work and resume their normal routines.

But in exiting, many will worry about the likelihood of power outages in their absence given rolling blackouts sparked by Harvey. The lights may have turned back on upon arrival. Still, how can one know if the power went out during one's outing? How does one if the food in the fridge will still be safe to eat? For those evacuated from their homes under threat of disaster, concern about food spoilage is of particular concern.

For this, you might want to add two items to your emergency hurricane kit of flashlights, extra batteries and portable radio. All you need is a coin and a cup of frozen water.

Seriously.

A social media post from a woman in Lumberton, N.C. is being credited with spreading the word on a nifty trick to check on potential food spoilage. The tip by Sheila Pulanco Russell has been widely shared, with more than a quarter million times and counting.

It's rather ingenious. Before leaving the house, freeze water in a cup and place a quarter on the surface of the ice. If, upon returning, one sees the coin at the bottom of the ice, food spoilage is a certainty given the thaw. But if the coin has succumbed to ice-melt-aided gravity barely below the surface, it means the power outage was brief and the food is probably still good to eat.

Coin in frozen cup, she wrote:

For those of you that are evacuating from the coast, I just heard a great tip. It's called the one cup tip. You put a cup of water in your freezer. Freeze it solid and then put a quarter on top of it and leave it in your freezer. That way when you come back after you've been evacuated you can tell if your food went completely bad and just refroze or if it stayed frozen while you were gone. If the quarter has fallen to the bottom of the cup that means all the food defrosted and you should throw it out. But if the quarter is either on the top or in the middle of the cup then your food may still be ok. It would also be a great idea to leave this in your freezer all the time and if you lose power for any reason you will have this tip to fall back on. If you don’t feel good about your food, just throw it out. The main thing is for all to be safe.

Pulanco originally came up with her coin trick during Hurricane Matthew that recently wrought devastation and massive flooding in Haiti before striking a wide swath across Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas, she explained. But the life hack works in any hurricane environment.

As word spread of the handy tip, it achieved the gravitas of science. Associate Professor Don Mercer of Food Science at University of Guelph gave his figurative seal of approval on the idea, but prefers the use of a penny given that the copper content of those coins are good conductors of heat. This is what the penny version would look like:

In addition to continued threat of flooding from Hurricane Harvey, power outages have been reported throughout Texas as a result of strong winds. Officials reported as many as 250,000 households were without power Saturday afternoon due to blackouts throughout Texas—some 60,000 in the Houston area alone.

>>> Photos by Tony Cantú