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.
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.
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.
Shoot I’ll leave rice on the counter all day sometimes… I should stop doing that.
Hell yeah chubbyemu
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??
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.
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 AFAIKCook it, seal it, put it in the fridge. 5 days is fine.
even better: freezer
Honestly 5 days out on the counter was asking for trouble - that long is tempting fate even when stored properly in the fridge
Huh, i always thought that pasta and rice are some of the safer things to store a week in the fridge.
Yeah, cooked pasta? Two days tops, and I personally wouldn’t touch it after one. And why not refrigerate it? Did they not own one, because I can’t see any other logical explanation to not do this.
From just the post I was going to say college student with a crappy mini fridge that couldn’t possibly hold a weeks worth of meals. The article had more info and said his parents found him after he didn’t get up for class though. So seems like he was still living at home. No reason to not refrigerate it and how did his parents not notice what he was doing? Seems like somebody around should have had more common sense than this.
Two days on pasta? I give 5-7 in the fridge, and six months if I freeze it. Maybe a little less if its a dairy based sauce like alfredo
Yeah, like I said, tops. I wouldn’t eat it personally, but I don’t think you’ll die.
This made me really anxious about how long I tend to leave food out up until the moment I read that he left it out on the counter FOR FIVE DAYS
The CDC says no more than two hours for perishable food, and one hour if ambient temp is 90°F or above.
For the 96% of the world that aren’t stuck in the 1700, that means 32°C
Save someone else having to look up the conversion: 1700 metric years is roughly 3092 years fahrenheit
I mean, if you aren’t stuck in the 1700s, you can just google what it converts to…
People don’t read articles 'cause they don’t want to spend a click, and you suggest opening a new tab and doing a web search?
Alternatively, we could put units in something the majority of internet users use and let the minority take that extra step…
I lived with a flatmate that used to pull this sort of shit.
Typical process:
She would remove the frozen chicken from the fridge, put it on the outdoor table, then go to class. Would come home to a defrosted chicken, which she would take and chop in half on the kitchen floor. Then she would put one half back in the freezer, usually on top. Lovely going to get ice to find it’s covered in frozen defrosted chicken blood. She would then use the other half to cook up a soup in our one big pot we had. This pot would live on the back corner of the stove for a week. Or two. Each day she would take a ladle full and warm it up to eat. The big pot wasn’t kept warm or in the fridge.
I got to the point where as soon as we saw the mould growing out of the pot, we would biff the entire contents and water blast the pot outside. Much to her annoyance.
She would then just repeat again the next week.
That’s Wolverine level of self-healing if she didn’t get ill.
My MIL does this, to this day, regularly, and it baffles me how she doesn’t get food poisoning.
She most recently let a chicken carcass hang out at room temp for 36 hours before boiling it to make a soup, which, okay, boil it long and high enough you’re probably fine. But then after it was done the stove was turned off and it sat out for another 18 hours before being put in the fridge.
Also she doesn’t believe that hard boiled eggs need to be refrigerated, I’ve seen a batch sit for 7+ days.
She also thinks I’m wasteful if I toss something that’s moldy, she scrapes the mold off and eats it. But based on what I’ve read, there are unseen spores you’re just ingesting so screw that.
Why is she alive?
deleted by creator
Man she just really wanted to see if her body could take it. Imagine the confusion at the horrible shits she must’ve had regularly. Couldn’t have anything to do with those food practices.
Where was she from?
Cambodia
I wonder if that’s common practice, where I grew up in Australia it wasn’t uncommon to see meat hung up outside under a tree and people just cutting off the rotten bits
Maybe.
This was Dunedin, NZ, so it was cold enough during the day to not be the end of the world, but still…
Yeah In today’s day and age with what we know about bacteria and refrigeration i see no need for what any of these people were doing
When’s the funeral?
what the fuck??? how did you not pull her aside and say “hey, not ok”??
Oh we did.
Regularly.
But as poor students, it was pick your battles. Her dick boyfriend used to drive them both home drunk as, then cook chicken nuggets at 3am setting off the smoke alarms on a Tuesday…
The despair I felt reading that was awful. Also it was super gross; I had to pause halfway through.
Good times.
Kitchen floor you say??
Same lol. 5 days is absolutely insane.
Never fails to amaze me how so many people don’t understand basic food storage.
My clients, constantly: “What do you mean I can’t just throw this open bag in the fridge?”, “What do you mean, ‘foil isn’t airtight’?”, “I don’t know how long it’s been in there! What do you mean it expired a month ago?” and my absolute favorite, “You can’t throw my moldy food away! You owe me money for that!”
Are you a fridge-contents-consultant or something?
It was a bit of an anxiety ride for me as well, being a frequent rice and pasta consumer.
Good yeah, I passed out after dinner last night, woke up 4 hours later and scooped up the left over spaghetti from the pan and fridged it. Ate* it for breakfast.
Edit
I’d think pasta and rice would be a little bland together.
Saffron rice+orzo
If you haven’t had pasta fried rice, you have lived an easier life than I.
Please do tell me more about pasta fried rice!
A pasta? Am I to accept as gods own truth that a pasta was the one who took wok into hand and fried this rice?
Yup. This exactly. After 2, and I feel like I shouldn’t even go that far lol, I toss out. Safe than sorry and all that.
You’d eat food that’s been sitting on the counter for 2 days? Maaaybe 2 hours.
You’ve never brushed the mold off a week old pizza after a heroin binge?
No, not once in my 21 years using heroin.
Im astounded at the speed that this can kill.
If I’m reading the article correctly, it was <24 hrs? God damn.
From the article:
Investigators examined his body and determined that he passed away at around 4 a.m., ten hours after ingesting the spaghetti.
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.
You can’t eat at everybody’s house 🎶
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
I don’t think this applies to modern fridges. They are more than capable of maintaining their desired temperature when hot food is there.
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.
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 😱😱😱
Especially when sealed. It can’t dry and it’s like a petri dish for mold and bacteria.
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.
I just realised … The bacteria is … Seriously … Called B. Cereus?
I believe the Latin pronunciation would be something like “Chayreous”
source: 🇮🇹
I am serious, and don’t call me bacteria.
Bacillus cereus
Yep.
Sounds like a Harry Potter spell
Does Bacillus Cereus look like a bitch?
Itty bitty rod shaped things. More like a bunch of really little dicks.
The specific name, cereus, meaning “waxy” in Latin, refers to the appearance of colonies grown on blood agar.
Cereus?
Cuper Cereus.
The name’s Cereus, Bacillus Cereus
Why so Cereus?
Before her death in 2023, actress Cindy Williams auditioned for the role of Harry Potter’s godfather in The Prisoner of Azkaban. Of course she was completely wrong for the part, but she was invited to the audition just so that the casting director could say to her, “Shirley you can’t be Sirius.”
But her name is Cindy.
But she’s most famous for her titular role on the hit 70s sitcom, “Laverne and Shirley.”
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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
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.
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.
5 days without putting it in the fridge? Hell at 5 days I’d even freeze it.
I was doing something similar and even in the fridge at day 5 I could taste that it was borderline ok. At 5 days on the counter it must have tasted so fermented it was bubbling.
Pasta and kimchi all in one.
“That’s flavor patina.”
I wonder if it was like closed with a lid and wet or if it was kinda open an dry. Either way, after 5 days I would not eat either one. Fucking yuck!
It was sealed in an airtight container, Tupperware or something like that.
Best case would be put it into a clean, dried container when the pasta is still steaming hot and seal it right away. But I still wouldn’t touch it after 5 days.
Weird to have the foresight to do that, but then not to put it into the fridge.
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??
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.
Honest question. What do you do with pizza if you still have leftovers on day 3+? I feel odd putting bread in the fridge.
Pizza never survived the morning of the second day for me.
pizza
3 days old
😲
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.
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.
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…
I would freeze it
