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.
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.
This is what happens when parents forget to teach their kids anything because “that’s why we have schools”.
And kids grow up thinking “I already know everything, I went to school”
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.
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’ve definitely been this level of stupid, just luckier, so I have enough sympathy for the both of us.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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
I just realised … The bacteria is … Seriously … Called B. 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.”
The specific name, cereus, meaning “waxy” in Latin, refers to the appearance of colonies grown on blood agar.
Removed by mod
Cuper Cereus.
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.
I spent WAY too much time on this
OK, so we can set the benchmark for danger at 5 days of room temperature.
Thanks random test subject. And RIP.
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 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.
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
For meat, that’s actually OK. Many meat curing processes involve mold.
On the other hand, don’t eat moldy bread.
Kitchen floor you say??
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…
Good times.
The despair I felt reading that was awful. Also it was super gross; I had to pause halfway through.
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.
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?
When’s the funeral?
That’s Wolverine level of self-healing if she didn’t get ill.
Did she like, mop the floor first? Was it vinyl or tile?
No.
Vinyl.
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.
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 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?
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
I mean, if you aren’t stuck in the 1700s, you can just google what it converts to…
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
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.
The CDC to which I was referencing happens to be part of the 4% stuck in the 1700s.
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!”
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
I think emptiestplace is correct. Rancidity is oxidation of fat. Highly saturated fats are very resistant to oxidation (it take a bit much energy to oxidize fully saturated fats)
Beef tallow is highly saturated and is shelf stable for years
I’m surprised there wasn’t any mold after 5 days of being kept unrefrigerated.
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.
B. Cereus is no joke!
This guy had that…he pasta way, though.
That’s actually a good one.
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 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.
Maybe he lived in Antarctica without central heat? 🤔
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!
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??
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
3 days old
😲
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.
What do you do with pizza if you still have leftovers on day 3+?
You use it as a Frisbee outside.
I would freeze it
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’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.
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.
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.
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
fried wings are the worst leftover food given you have to throw out half of them 😓
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.
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.
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.
You can’t eat at everybody’s house 🎶
From the article:
Investigators examined his body and determined that he passed away at around 4 a.m., ten hours after ingesting the spaghetti.
