Ripped parts of the post:
The bacteria is best known for causing a type of food poisoning called “Fried Rice Syndrome,” since rice is sometimes cooked and left to cool at room temperature for a few hours. During that time, the bacteria can contaminate it and grow. B. cereus is especially dangerous because it produces a toxin in rice and other starchy foods that is heat resistant and may not die when the food it infects is cooked.
And
Unfortunately, that was the case for a 20-year-old student, who passed away after eating five-day-old pasta.
His story was described in the Journal of Clinical Microbiology a few years back, but has since resurfaced due to some YouTube videos and Reddit posts. According to article, every Sunday the student would make his meals for the entire week so he wouldn’t need to deal with making it on the weekdays. One Sunday, he cooked up some spaghetti, then put it in Tupperware containers so that days later, he could just add some sauce to it, reheat it and enjoy it.
However, he didn’t store the pasta in the fridge, rather he left it out on the counter. After five days of the food sitting out at room temperature, he heated some up and ate it. While he noticed an odd taste to the food, he figured it was just due to the new tomato sauce he added to it.
unsure if same student but story I knew of was he accidently left 1 container out, and the pther person he loved with saw it in the counter and not realising how long it had been out it in the fridge where it sat like a ticking time bomb till he ate that particular container.
Article seems to regurgitate that story with the details incorrect.
5 days??? Yikes. I feel uncomfortable if I leave food out for an hour just to let it cool down. I’ll admit I’ve done some stupid stuff with leaving food out in my younger years (pizza left in the box on the counter for 2-3 days; one time while deployed to Iraq I stupidly thought the floor of our trailer would remain cool enough to keep an open can of chip dip fresh – Newsflash: It did not), but 5 days??
Honest question. What do you do with pizza if you still have leftovers on day 3+? I feel odd putting bread in the fridge.
What do you do with pizza if you still have leftovers on day 3+?
You use it as a Frisbee outside.
If I had leftover pizza and I knew I wasn’t going to get to eating it within 3 days, it’s going in the freezer.
Pizza never survived the morning of the second day for me.
For pizza I feel gross if I don’t put it in the fridge at least an hour after receiving it, then reheat in oven or eat cold. It’s not just bread it’s sauce and dairy and whatever meat or toppings are on it…
pizza
3 days old
😲
I would freeze it
Frezza
I can’t remember the last time leftover pizza was still around in my house after 24 hours, but any pizza not eaten in goes into the fridge as soon as everyone is done eating.
I’ve have food out frequently for like half a day / overnight but 5 days sounds absolutely insane to me. I don’t even want to know how the noodles must’ve looked like, probably already smelled at that point too. Makes me queasy just thinking about eating that…
Right!? On the one hand I feel like this guy was a dumb-dumb, but on the other hand, maybe he was never taught proper food safety, or maybe this was his first time living alone and cooking for himself and he just didn’t know any better. Sad way to die either way.
I’m a stupid person and honestly I believed that if you microwaved anything long enough, it’ll kill the bad germs. it made sense: radio waves === kill zone.
Then a microbiologist explained to me that you’re just killing the living organisms, not the toxic waste they leave behind which is still on the food. I was in my 30s when I learned that.
I can only imagine what other weird shit people believe because nobody ever said anything and they just put 2+2 together.
That shits why I microwave leftovers.
(And dont leave it out on the counter for a week).
that is heat resistant and may not die when the food it infects is cooked.
Keep leftovers in the fridge, consume them quickly and discard if you observe odd smell, taste or right wing leanings.
fried wings are the worst leftover food given you have to throw out half of them 😓
There’s a thick line between being resistant to heat and being resistant to high energy waves of radiation.
But yes refrigerate and throw out weird uncles.
Any reason to think that the toxin, which is not a living organism, is weak against energy waves?
Well because this is B, Cereus and not B, Cytotoxicus that means the Toxin isn’t a protein but an active spore culture (yes this bacteria makes spores), which deactivates in microwaves and can be destroyed given enough time.
It feels sad that I have to explain this after we all just read the same article. The Toxin is produced by a Bacteria which can form in cookware and storage containers even while stil very warm.
If the food is sealed and packaged while still in the safe temperaturesl range then it will not be contaminated. Refrigeration only slows microbe growth.
People should refridgerate food. They should also microwave leftovers.
I’m glad to see you check that your leftovers have B. Cereaus and not B Cytotoxicus before microwaving it. Only fools would forget that, right?
My stance is not and has never been about not refridgerating.
Your stance by trying to refute me is inadvertently that you should not microwave leftovers.
My stance is that the microwave isn’t a magical solution that will make any contaminated food edible.
I’m not sure what hoops you’re jumping to put those words in my post.
For this one I only read the headline and context in comments so thanks for jumping in with some info. Bacteria producing spores is definitely something I’d never heard of, and sounds like an interesting wikipedia binge for later
5 days without putting it into the fridge? That’s asking for trouble.
I feel comfortable about 2-4 hours without a fridge, but I’ve occasionally left rice out 12 hours a few times with no issues. Same with pasta.
Cooked stuff is borderline if it spends 5 days in the fridge. 5 days NOT in the fridge is insanity.
How hot is your fridge?
I know you CAN eat 5 day old stuff out of the fridge, but it’s at the point where I would be suspicious, depending on the item.
If there was nothing over five days old in my fridge, it would be empty.
I’m obviously talking about leftovers/prepared food.
Yeah, and I’ve made most of what’s in my fridge.
Ok well literally everything tells you not to do that. Do what you want, but general rule is 3-4 days for most meat things, and you should be careful at 5.
Same, it depends on the item and how I’m able to store it. BBQ i feel pretty comfortable keeping in the fridge for up to 5 days, but most things I try to keep down to 2 days. 3 at most. Certainly anything starchy like noodles or rice, potatoes and such, no more than 2.
Food needs to cool down to 4° (40f) within the 2-4hrs to be safe as a good rule.
Rice is a dish I serve the meal with, then take the extra that is hot and put into a shallow container to cool at room temp while eating dinner & then refrigerate.
4 hours max in the zone between 40 and 140F is the general guideline for risk. There are a lot of nuances to it like how pasteurization and sous vide cooking work but in general that’s a good rule of thumb
There is a persistent belief that cooked rice is exempt from the 4-hour rule. That belief is mostly wrong, because the water activity in cooked rice is still able to support a few hardy species of bacteria, including b. cereus (the bacteria that cause this illness), in some circumstances. It’s pretty rare, but possible, and therefore inevitable that it will eventually happen to people who fail to refrigerate rice.
Also to note that’s only if you’re gonna continue to store it.
Food left out for more than four hours is safe to consume like pizza but if you’re not gonna finish it, trash it at that point you cannot store it anymore.
We had a rule where if you left pizza out for 24 hours, it’s still good if you’re willing to have diarrhea butt.
After 48 hours, it’s still good if you’re willing to vomit.
In college, definitely had people who took those risks.
This is incorrect
4 hours is the safe to consume cutoff per other agencies (like the center for food safety in the uk) but they agree foods that spent more that 2 hours in 40-140F shouldn’t be refrigerated, even if still safe to eat
https://www.cfs.gov.hk/english/trade_zone/safe_kitchen/Temperature_Danger_Zone.html
The usda is far more conservative. Same basic guidelines but food should be refrigerated within an hour and discarded after 2. Dunno if this is reflective of changes in quality in the food supply or just more concern for liability
Will you get food poisoning if you eat 6 hour old pizza? Frankly almost certainly not, but it depends on a number of factors like if and how it was handled, the holding temp during service, immunocompromised status, etc. real world studies on pizza specifically show fairly low bacterial growth on pizza that was prepared safely and not handled, but significantly more (although still pretty low) if the pizza was handled during serving (which is more realistic).
But I mean literally millions of people eat rare beef every day without issue so it’s about how much risk you’re willing to tolerate, ultimately
These recommendations pretty much always err on the side of caution to such a degree that a lot of people don’t really respect them. Saying you should throw away pizza after it has been in room temp for 2 hours, come on now, when there’s some actually serious recommendation peoole will think it’s similar sort of nonsense and not follow it.
Rare beef is a bit of an anomaly in that the meat is quite dense, and while the surface can grow bacteria, the interior spolis much slower (not to say its safe forever, but can be safe eat cooked Pennsylvania rare, for example).
True but some people have rare burgers and the ground beef ruins what you’ve said
Hell yeah chubbyemu
B. Cereus is no joke!
This guy had that…he pasta way, though.
That’s actually a good one.
It’s almost like the scientists who named this bacteria knew this would happen.
You can’t… B. Cereus
Misleading title. He didn’t eat leftovers. He was eating rancid, spoiled food that had been left out for 5 days. He was eating garbage.
Leftovers are when you store food in the fridge for a few days in a container.
I’m surprised there wasn’t any mold after 5 days of being kept unrefrigerated.
Rancidity is unlikely to be a factor here, as it primarily affects foods high in unsaturated fats when exposed to oxygen over an extended period. Leftovers stored in an airtight container in the refrigerator for just a few days won’t experience significant oxidation to cause rancidity.
I think emptiestplace is correct. Rancidity is oxidation of fat. Highly saturated fats are very resistant to oxidation (it take a bit much energy to oxidize fully saturated fats)
Beef tallow is highly saturated and is shelf stable for years
Yeah … lemmy has done horribly at retaining intelligent users.
5 days out of the fridge - even sealed - is straight insanity. Of course he got sick eventually, I’m just surprised it took so long 😱😱😱
Maybe he lived in Antarctica without central heat? 🤔
I’m surprised it wasn’t visibly mouldy at that point
The article says he stored it in Tupperware. Spaghetti in an airtight container, like rice and other carbs, take a lot longer to show signs of mold. So maybe not in the first week. But absolutely after a month!
And for anybody curious who wants to try the science: reminder that if you see visible mold, it’s already too late. The spores are deep in the food and what’s visible is just a fraction of the fungus!
Especially sealed, it would probably just have dried up otherwise and been crunchy but ok.
You beat me to it, yes absolutely.
Especially when sealed. It can’t dry and it’s like a petri dish for mold and bacteria.
This thread is interesting. Everywhere ranging from “I eat pizza from the counter after 3 days” to “yeah I would never eat anything left out on the counter for over 2 hours”.
And someone said everything in their fridge is food they cooked over 5 days ago… Why??
The thing with food safety is that the rate of occurrence may be low in some cases, but the consequences can be extremely high or fatal. And eating is an activity that is repeated often. So following safe practices is extremely important.
And someone said everything in their fridge is food they cooked over 5 days ago…
I’ve been doing this for years and years. Maybe not wayyy more than 5 days but it is usually about a week. I don’t have all that much time after work so I don’t want to waste time cooking and I’m not wasting money on take out so I do all my cooking for the week on Saturday or Sunday. I don’t do what the poor kid in the article did though, if anything I put things in the fridge that are still way too hot but I never wanted to risk something like that.
Cook it, seal it, put it in the fridge. 5 days is fine.
even better: freezer
Can just be a bit less convenient, depending.
if anything I put things in the fridge that are still way too hot but I never wanted to risk something like that.
It’s better for food hygiene to go from hot to cold as fast as possible, it reduces the time it spends at the optimal temperatures for bacteria to grow. That’s what we do for example when we sterilize milk, tomato, etc.
If your fridge can handle it, it’s not a problem AFAIKYeah the only concern is if you put too much hot food in at once or your fridge isn’t good, it can warm up other food in the fridge and cause it to spoil faster.
I can’t verify this, but I’ve heard that modern fridges are better at maintaining cold air temp and so there’s an outdated concern for putting hot food in your fridge. Just don’t have your hot food touching another highly perishable food item.
You’re probably right except in cases of heavy and especially heat-holding foods. in other words: May not be the best idea to put your still piping hot big pot of soup in the fridge
Even with older fridges, I feel like it’s a mostly unfounded concern; yeah sure, don’t go putting 15 liters of boiling soup in the fridge, but if you put 500g of cooked pasta into a 300l fridge, it’s not going to care. Bear in mind that the other food in the fridge also acts as a negative calories storage.
That tracks with me. My rule of thumb is if you can hold the container with your bare hands long enough to get it in the fridge, it’s not hot
If you meal prep and know what you’re doing, 5 days is not outrageous.
Yes, but that’s where the freezer comes in. We really should not be eating too many food items after being cooked then hanging in the fridge over 5 days. I consider myself a lot less concerned about this kind of thing than most people but I would tap out usually after 5-6 days. Seems risky and definitely not a habit I wanna get into.
Missed opportunity for “the next day he woke up dead.”
Now how the hell does someone wake up dead?
The rats vs mice thing is a weekly topic at our house
Ask Dave Mustaine. He wrote a whole song about it.
This is such a fuckin non story. Dude left cooked food out unrefridgerated and got sick and died. No fuckin shit. We have places to keep cooked food cold for a fuckin reason. Stupid ass article trying to scare people about fuckin leftovers. Fuck this piece of shit ass article and the twat that wrote it.
I heard 5 day leftovers and thought. “5 day fridge leftovers might give you the runs but won’t kill you” then I read the article. That’s not leftovers, that’s garbage. Dude was eating rancid garbage
Exactly. Most cooked foods are just plain nasty by that point if left out at room temperature.
I genuinely know of an individual who believes refrigeration is a hoax and a conspiracy. He refrigerates nothing. Milk in the cabinets. I guess it’s just big refrigerator trying to manipulate us?
You might not know this person for very long
He’s not the healthiest and looks like absolute shit. Lmao. In his 60s now probably
I’m amazed he has lasted this long, is he at least storing things in a larder / cool room?
Only way I think he survives is that his entire house is below 40 F (4.4 C)
What the fuck. He thinks refrigeration is a hoax, yet keeps his house at refrigerator temperatures???
Maybe he lives in greenland or ? idk, I wonder what would he say if he were to move to like Thailand or somewhere that gets close to 100 humidity
What about freezing, does he also think that does nothing?
Nah honestly given the difference in danger depending on the food this isn’t bad to know. I’m familiar with pasta turning into a weird consistency with weird smell and I always threw it away when that happens, but since it’s not disgusting per se I’d probably have eaten it in a pinch (unlike, say, moldy food or meat that’s been sitting for a while).
I also know of people with some insnae aversion to wasting food that lends them to claim moldy meat is still good to eat (mother of a friend) so if anyone is in a situation with someone like that it’s good to be aware of how dangerous some foods that might not seem as bad are.
Yeah, what you leave out is more important than how long you leave it for. This particular bacteria is only going to be a problem if you leave out the perfect medium for it to grow.
It’s actually pretty hard for dangerous bacteria to grow in most foods, usually there’s not either not enough moisture or too much moisture, or the pH is too acidic and the bacteria will get outcompeted by things like environmental lactic acid bacteria, yeast, or even mold.
If the food you want to save contains moisture and isn’t preserved via acid, salt, or sugar, please store it in the refrigerator.
5 days ON THE COUNTER?! And it tasted off, and he consumed it anyway.
This is so stupid that it has to be intentional suicide.
I one time argued with literally hundreds of people on Reddit about basic food safety regarding food left out on the counter. I’m still floored by it. Numerous government agencies around the world agree about this, and yet…
Btw food safety was MORE critical before modern science because you could easily die from it back then. That was a common excuse people gave me in the previously mentioned subreddit, for eating food left out/bad - “our ancestors did it”. No.
Dude, I grew up with nonstop food poisoning because my mom did this. My family always said it was a “stomach flu” when the whole family was puking and shitting every other week.
It was horrible and I think it did some damage to my digestive system long term. I didn’t figure it out until I was in my 20’s and stopped eating anything she cooked.
I’m weird about left overs now, even though my husband is very clean when he cooks and doesn’t leave food out, or if he does it goes in the trash.
Don’t leave your food out people. It will fuck you up one day.
Wow, that sounds so frocking horrible… I grew up with a mom that involved me in the kitchen every chance she got, and I am really thankful for that, it taught me so much about food, cooking, baking. your story is basically the evil twin of mine! ‘Being weird’ about leftovers now seems like the minimal damage you could have taken, I would have a very hard time of trusting other folks’ food after growing up like that. Wow.
This is why I am highly circumspect about any food that people offer me. Cause you never know what their understanding of food safety is.
Food safety is so important! After taking the food manager safety test I hate eating at some peoples houses. It scares me. My step brothers use to leave meat to thaw on the countertop overnight. Miserable.
Our ancestors took storage measures right away, salting meat, putting root vegetables in the root cellar…
The bacteria is best known for causing a type of food poisoning called “Fried Rice Syndrome,” since rice is sometimes cooked and left to cool at room temperature for a few hours.
left to cool at room temperature for a few hours
I think I do that almost every single time I make food
Guy that died let it sit out for multiple days per article… he was eating rotting food.
Yes, I was just laughing about the clickbaity nature of the article.
After five days of the food sitting out at room temperature, he heated some up and ate it.
Super clickbaity lol, we all know not to leave food on the counter for a week right? It wouldn’t surprise me if the pasta was getting fuzzy by that point.
Worst I’ve done is eat pizza I left out overnight. A week? Nah. Never.
I typically just leave it out overnight… but I’m gonna stop doing that now lol
Again?!
Edit: oops no. Same guy. I think about this all the time. Like…who raised him to leave pasta on the counter and then eat it?! The sheer ignorance baffles me.
Article says, college student… if you are suprised… i hate to break it to ya. They are all that dumb in one way or another. I know i was at least. And i know im not outside of the status quo in that regard.
Hindsight and survivors bias. Also, super bad luck for that kid.
Second year in college, one of the guys in the dorm would buy whole pizzas from the food court. And just leave them under his bed while he ate them over several DAYS …
This is what happens when parents forget to teach their kids anything because “that’s why we have schools”.
And kids grow up thinking “I already know everything, I went to school”
Jesus. Russian roulette, food edition.
