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.
Im astounded at the speed that this can kill.
If I’m reading the article correctly, it was <24 hrs? God damn.
Toxins generated by bacteria and some fungi are EXTREMELY poisonous. The unfortunate victim essentially ate a poisonous mushroom in the form of pasta.
I am shocked to see how many people leave food on the counter to eat later. Refrigerate it immediately! Not one hour, not twenty minutes! As soon as you’re done eating, to the fridge it goes!
Nothing ever happens to you until it happens, and we’re not talking about stomach pain, but almost instant death.
Can’t be putting hot food in the fridge, it heats the fridge up.
The danger zone for food is between about 20 to 45 degrees Celsius. You can let hot food cool for an hour or so, but you’ve gotta get it into the fridge before it spends much time in that zone.
Obviously the amount of time this is a risk varies wildly by food, and some things are actually salty, acidic or fatty enough to limit a lot of bacterial growth for a surprising amount of time. But it’s just more sensible to not roll the dice on food safely
Wait, so since tomatoes are acidic is that why it’s not as big of a deal to let dishes with it cool completely before fridgerating? My ex told me that fridgerating too early makes the tomato go sour, so like chili I try to split into smaller containers to cool more quickly. Still makes me nervous leaving it out too long, but I haven’t had issues yet
Not sure about the sourness thing, but a tomato pasta sauce without meat can probably get away with it a few hours longer, but I’d probably still just pop it into the fridge when it got cool enough anyway.
Chili with meat in, I’d be more careful of.
20 to 45 degrees Celsius
For the Americans, the temperature danger zone is 45 to 135 degrees Fahrenheit.
I don’t think this applies to modern fridges. They are more than capable of maintaining their desired temperature when hot food is there.
I would still be careful, just because the whole fridge doesn’t heat up, the food next to the hot item would still warm up, increasing risk.
You can’t eat at everybody’s house 🎶
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I breezed over the 10 hours part somehow.
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.
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.
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
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.
fried wings are the worst leftover food given you have to throw out half of them 😓
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.
Five day old spaghetti sitting on a warm counter? Eww.
I thought he made a pasta dish, and the kept eating that. What the hell, making the spaghetti is the easiest bit and barely take a longer than microwaving some disgusting old pasta.
RIP this guy but I feel like we didn’t necessarily lose one of our sharpest minds.
I found out about this case through the chubbyemu video. Not sure how much of this was embellishment, but the way it’s explained in the video is that the pasta was left out for a couple days, then thrown into the refrigerator by a roommate who didn’t know it was probably bad. The guy then took out a portion of the pasta, completely unaware that it had gone rancid. Definitely a more believable mistake (although still pretty irresponsible of the meal prepper).
That’s why we don’t touch roommates food…they might kill you over it or you might poison them
Couple weeks ago someone ate a can of Chilli out of my cupboard but last night someone put in a pack of Ritz crackers which were delicious btw
That does sound way more reasonable.
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 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.
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.
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.
Our ancestors took storage measures right away, salting meat, putting root vegetables in the root cellar…
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.
Ive been told you MUST let rice cool on the counter before putting it in the fridge. My brother in Christ, that’s how you die.
…no it isn’t.
Letting stuff cool a little is better for your fridge though. I don’t think you run much of a risk from an hour or two, bacterial growth starts slow and accelerates exponentially.
It’s more than that.
If you don’t let it cool, you risk warming the other food you have already cooled to unsafe levels.
I’m pretty sure refrigeration of hot, bulk preparation items are a reason why your local restaurants get shut down or get violations.
I actually first typed out a paragraph with my thoughts that this could be an issue, but wasn’t sure enough of myself to post it and deleted it. Thanks for inadvertently confirming my suspicion!
I hadn’t even thought of restaurants, but it’s interesting this can be an issue even with their larger fridges.
That opening paragraph implies something different from the final paragraph (of the bit OP posted in this thread). Opening paragraph says a few hours, but the guy left his pasta out for the full 5 fucking days between cooking and eating it.
I’m one that generally prefers to not waste food but I won’t touch pasta or rice that I’ve accidentally left out overnight. Wtf was wrong with that guy?
Letting it cool for like 2-3 hours is perfectly fine, putting large quantities of near boiling hot stuff in the fridge might warm it up and decrease the lifespan of other stuff in the fridge.
Shoot I’ll leave rice on the counter all day sometimes… I should stop doing that.
I had a Vietnamese roommate who used his rice cooker so that he made a bunch if rice and always when he wanted more he just clicked the cooker on to reheat it. And it took him sometimes like five days to eat it.
Five days of rice sitting in room temperature and occasionally being heated. Mental. That’s not food prep that’s a science experiment.
Dude was also often opinion that meat only gets better when it starts to smell a little in the fridge and you’ll just pour a lot of soy sauce on it and down it goes with the forever rice.
Apart from being a biowaste eating lunatic he was a good roommate.
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I’ve heard many stories like that over the years.
I’m of the (possibly wrong) theory that their gut bacteria have adapted to handle it. The same way you’ll get sick if you travel to India or Mexico, etc and drink the water but locals are fine…
I leave mine in the rice cooker but no more than a day. It’s starts to get slimy after that and clearly inedible.
Chubbyemu on YouTube. Watching his videos will change your approach to food safety as well as a lot of the ordinary things we often do or think about doing that are, in fact, extremely dangerous.
Lol I’m interested now, but the name made me think the channel was about a self-deprecating overweight fan of emulators…or large flightless birds, now that I think about it.
I’m trying to sympathy for the victim but I just can’t.
Dude was eating moldy or rotten food. There’s no way that he couldn’t taste something wrong with it. Probably thought, “This tastes bad but whatever.” Remember people, do not go “whatever” when it comes to food.
If it tastes bad, is slimy, was left out for a long time (dairy or egg more than 2 hours, moist food more than 4 hours, dry baked goods more than 12 hours), then throw it out. We have coolers and fridges for a reason. To slow down bacterial growth to preserve food for some short term future. Freezers for a lot longer. Use the freaking tools you’ve been given.
This what happens when parents serve terrible food to their kids. This kids palate never developed beyond McDonald’s fries and chicken tendies.
I don’t think it was slimy. But he noticed a weird taste, but thought that it came from his new tomato sauce he tried(that’s what’s written in the article)
Maybe try a bit harder. This is a very easy mistake to make if you don’t cook often. He was twenty. So maybe you can keep your bullshit deep inside and say nothing if you have nothing substantial to say. People don’t live and die for your fucking approval.
I’ve definitely been this level of stupid, just luckier, so I have enough sympathy for the both of us.
5 day old, room temp pasta, is simply unforgivable
Dude eats like a raccoon
Missed opportunity for “the next day he woke up dead.”
Now how the hell does someone wake up dead?
Ask Dave Mustaine. He wrote a whole song about it.
The rats vs mice thing is a weekly topic at our house
Hell yeah chubbyemu
OK, so we can set the benchmark for danger at 5 days of room temperature.
Thanks random test subject. And RIP.
However, he didn’t store the pasta in the fridge, rather he left it out on the counter.
Oh, okay. And I was worried for a moment that it could happen to me…
Fr I also got scared until I realized the guy is just an idiot. Who eats food that that has been left OUTSIDE for 5 days. How did it not stink or taste sour?
How did it not stink or taste sour?
OP was kind enough to summarize the article into 3-4 short paragraphs, one of which answers your question.
Here:
While he noticed an odd taste to the food, he figured it was just due to the new tomato sauce he added to it.
Terrible headline. The bacteria that killed him is associated with ‘Fried Rice Syndrome’ but FRS is named for leftovers stored in the fridge, not uneaten food left on the counter.
also like… i think literal billions of people eat fried rice that’s been sitting in the fridge for a day or two, and yet “fried rice syndrome” remains basically an urban legend.
I agree. It rubbed me the wrong way and even felt a bit racist.
It isn’t.
Oh okay thanks person who commente “she’s cute” under pictures of young anime girls
come on, that’s unfair - I also comment that under pictures of actual young girls
B. Cereus is no joke!
This guy had that…he pasta way, though.
That’s actually a good one.
be serious.
5 days is fucking absurd
nobody ever accused bacteria of making sense
