20-Year-Old Dies From 'Fried Rice Syndrome' After Eating Leftover Pasta
20-Year-Old Dies From 'Fried Rice Syndrome' After Eating Leftover Pasta
His story can serve as a warning to others to be careful with their leftovers. | iHeart
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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.
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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.
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
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
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.
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.
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.