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.
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.
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.
OK, so we can set the benchmark for danger at 5 days of room temperature.
Thanks random test subject. And RIP.
B. Cereus is no joke!
This guy had that…he pasta way, though.
That’s actually a good one.
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.
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.
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?
I’m trying to sympathy for the victim but I just can’t.
5 day old, room temp pasta, is simply unforgivable
Dude eats like a raccoon
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.
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.
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)
This what happens when parents serve terrible food to their kids. This kids palate never developed beyond McDonald’s fries and chicken tendies.
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.
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
I mean I’ve done that. But my reaction after I realise how long I’ve left it out is not going to be “sure, I’ll eat that.”
Our local food-info government body advises max 2 hours outside of the fridge, that should be enough for most foods to cool down for the fridge, right? No need to go days on end 🤣
Same lol. 5 days is absolutely insane.
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.
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
Did she like, mop the floor first? Was it vinyl or tile?
No.
Vinyl.
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…
Man, fuck share houses!
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??
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.
When’s the funeral?
That’s Wolverine level of self-healing if she didn’t get ill.
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
For meat, that’s actually OK. Many meat curing processes involve mold.
On the other hand, don’t eat moldy bread.
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
I once ate a slice of pizza that sat in a ziploc bag for three days inside a truck when the outside peak temp was near 110f.
I love me some day old room temp 'za, but even at 22, I knew that was risky.
Needed a day off, I guess.
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
The CDC to which I was referencing happens to be part of the 4% stuck in the 1700s.
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?
Yeah, like, what is this? The 1700s?
Alternatively, we could put units in something the majority of internet users use and let the minority take that extra step…
The temp was on a website by the CDC, an American agency within the federal government…
Why would they use Celcius to convey information to their own citizens, who primarily use Fahrenheit, to appease the rest of the world? Do countries that primarily use Celcius have their government agencies post all of their temperature recommendations in Fahrenheit for the Americans around the world?
Americans can use both so we just… use what is easy. How hot will it be today? 97F. How hot do F1 brakes get? 1000+C, and tyres 100C. They reach over 200 mph. The race distance is around 300km.
They did, and they shared it for people who aren’t stuck in the 1700s.
It’s also more efficient for one person to do it, rather than everyone having to do it
It was a bit of an anxiety ride for me as well, being a frequent rice and pasta consumer.
I’d think pasta and rice would be a little bland together.
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?
Saffron rice+orzo
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
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?
Likely some kind of aide or in-home help. I have family that works in that field and a lot of it is just helping people with “normal” routine things we all do, but that they’re unable to for whatever reason.
What are your clients?
Er, better question to ask is probably, what do you do for work? Lol
I’m a residential counselor. Basically what someone else described, I work with people out of the hospital to reintroduce them into the community. I teach life skills, coping skills, appropriate behavior, that sort of thing.
My clients are middle functioning adults, primarily male, right now 30s and up. Think a grown man, but with the comprehension skills of a middle schooler or lower.
Lot of patience, lot of repetition, lot of getting yelled at, hit occasionally. Fun times.
Thank you for doing what you do.
I think I see a lot of your clients hanging out in the comments sections of Facebook and Instagram!
Foil isn’t air tight?
How are you making foil air tight?
Crimping and folding it around the edge of the pan or the foil itself. Foil can hold in the steam of a pan in the oven or a foil pack on a campfire, for practical purposes that’s air tight. If you’re trying to contain superheated helium then it’s a different story.
Not air tight enough for extended storage purposes, too air tight for cooling in the fridge. It’s all relative as your examples demonstrate.
Hm. I now wonder if it depends. But I don’t wonder enough to do an experiment, lol
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.
Yeah it’s normally just some diarrhea, maybe some vomiting, maybe some immunocompromised people will have more serious symptoms. 5 days is a long time, but so is killing a 20 year old in 10 hours.
It’s probably helpful to think of it as increasingly bad results from increasingly bad practices, and still seek to avoid the milder non-deadly results too.
I leave out my soup in room temp for days, while regularly boiling it every meal time to prevent it from spoiling. Am I screwed?
There are two vectors for food poisoning: Active harmful bacteria in your food, and toxins which are produced by harmful bacteria. When you boil it again, it removes the former threat but not the latter. Yes, this is very dangerous and you could die.
That’s bad but you’re not screwed. Just stop doing that. Get some Tupperware, put it in the fridge between uses.
It’s almost like the scientists who named this bacteria knew this would happen.
You can’t… B. Cereus
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.
Our ancestors took storage measures right away, salting meat, putting root vegetables in the root cellar…
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
…no it isn’t.
Honestly 5 days out on the counter was asking for trouble - that long is tempting fate even when stored properly 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.
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
Ngl I stretch it out to like 2 weeks sometimes, throwing out only only if it starts starts smelling or the texture goes bad…
Should I not be doing this lol
Yeah, like I said, tops. I wouldn’t eat it personally, but I don’t think you’ll die.
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.
Huh, i always thought that pasta and rice are some of the safer things to store a week in the fridge.
I mean there’s caution and there’s what is fine to do normally. I’ve noticed that especially online people heavily lean towards caution, some don’t even reheat rise because dangerous.
I think something like five days is fine and just be sensible about it, look, smell, if seems good, taste, if good, should be just fine.
Dumbasses who just leave pasta in room temperature for five days and then eat it are what scare people in being really cautious and the reason some stricter recommendations are made.
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 😱😱😱
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!
Maybe he lived in Antarctica without central heat? 🤔
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.
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
I typically just leave it out overnight… but I’m gonna stop doing that now lol
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.
be serious.
5 days is fucking absurd
nobody ever accused bacteria of making sense
