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.
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.
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.
It’s almost like the scientists who named this bacteria knew this would happen.
You can’t… B. Cereus
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.
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 …
Jesus. Russian roulette, food edition.
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.
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.
Shoot I’ll leave rice on the counter all day sometimes… I should stop doing that.
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.
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.
Having originally come from Asia, I can tell you Asians aren’t exactly good at critical thinking. Yeah, there is stereotype of Asians being smart, but it is more like being good at memorisation and rote-learning instead of applying the theory in practice. Many Asians have engineering and medical degree, but many are still very superstitious (like my parents are). You’d think someone with a scientific background would apply the scientific method outside of work, but not really.
I don’t blame Asian folks, the blame is squarely on the education system that forces individuals to become unquestioning and obedient workers, who are not encouraged to think outside the box. The Asian education is cutthroat and very much similar to the old Prussian education system. However, the latter is now obsolete, but the former is still thriving.
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…
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 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.
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
Cook it, seal it, put it in the fridge. 5 days is fine.
even better: freezer
Can just be a bit less convenient, depending.
Hell yeah chubbyemu
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
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.
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?
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.
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
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.
When’s the funeral?
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 spent WAY too much time on this
Why is this so important? It’s just some germs.
Bro, it’s literally called B. cereus
I believe the Latin pronunciation would be something like “Chayreous”
source: 🇮🇹
I am serious, and don’t call me bacteria.
The specific name, cereus, meaning “waxy” in Latin, refers to the appearance of colonies grown on blood agar.
Cereus?
Cuper Cereus.
Bacillus cereus
Yep.
Sounds like a Harry Potter spell
Does Bacillus Cereus look like a removed?
Itty bitty rod shaped things. More like a bunch of really little dicks.
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.”
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.
I breezed over the 10 hours part somehow.
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
20 to 45 degrees Celsius
For the Americans, the temperature danger zone is 45 to 135 degrees Fahrenheit.
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.
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?
The rats vs mice thing is a weekly topic at our house
Ask Dave Mustaine. He wrote a whole song about it.
