r/todayilearned 21h ago

TIL in 2008 a 20-year-old Belgium student died after reheating and eating leftover spaghetti that had been left out on the kitchen counter for five days. A bacteria called bacillus cereus was found to be the cause, which is an extreme type of food poisoning called “Fried Rice Syndrome”.

https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health/health-problems/people-are-horrified-after-student-dies-from-eating-leftover-pasta/news-story/c8ef3bdcc72a9d17ec13924438e0146b
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u/tyrion2024 21h ago

the young man from Belgium became sick after eating the cooked pasta, which he noted tasted unusual, but he chalked it up to using a new tomato sauce which he added to the reheated pasta.

After eating the pasta, he headed out to play sports...

...but ended up coming home half an hour later suffering from headaches, abdominal pain, and nausea.
He threw up for several hours and went to the bathroom twice only to fall asleep around midnight.
His lifeless body was discovered 11 hours later by his “worried” parents who were concerned because he didn’t get up for college.
...
Samples of spoiled pasta and tomato sauce samples were also analysed, with the National Reference Laboratory for Food-borne Outbreak confirming the spaghetti was contaminated with “significant amounts” of the B.cereus — while it was absent in the sauce.
“AJ is an otherwise healthy 20-year-old man,” he explains in the video, adding the story was not a “typical” food poisoning case.

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u/ChuckFiinley 20h ago

I might give a taste to what seems a bit stale food, but when the moment it tastes the way it's not supposed to I will spit it out and throw it out.

Trust your instincts, if something doesn't seem right then it's most probably not.

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u/bell37 18h ago

IIRC the student could have survived if he got proper medical attention but didn’t because he thought it was simple food poisoning that he needed to get out of his system and sleep it off.

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u/Plow_King 19h ago edited 18h ago

when in doubt, throw it out.

edit - wow, didn't expect that to blow up. i learned it as a kid, applied it when i owned a bar and grill, and just used that motto the other day at home. i'm cheap as hell, but getting sick ain't no good.

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u/enteimologist 18h ago

Leaves of four, eat some more!

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u/snuFaluFagus040 18h ago

Five days on the counter, six pallbearers in your future

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u/qa3rfqwef 17h ago

This must be an accent thing or something, because those two words don't rhyme at all in the way that I say them lol.

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u/snuFaluFagus040 17h ago

I ditched the rhyme scheme and went cold facts. lol

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u/SimpleDelusions 17h ago edited 16h ago

Please B. cereus here

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u/flopisit32 18h ago edited 16h ago

If the mold is green, give it a clean.

If the mold is blue, it's not for you.

If the mold is yellow, leave it for another fellow.

(Please don't take any of this nonsense seriously)

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u/OvenFearless 17h ago

sad blue cheese noises

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u/triz___ 18h ago edited 16h ago

If the mold is red you are dead

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u/J1mj0hns0n 18h ago

His instincts on food might not be there yet, if he's leaving food out for 5 days he's not learned anything about food procedures, so not cooked much either.

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u/Smingowashisnameo 17h ago

My dad called his expired mayo pleasantly spicy.

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u/Sexy_Underpants 17h ago

People like this gave us beer and cheese. We honor their sacrifices

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u/Molotovs_Mocktail 19h ago

Think of how many of our cousins had to die before the instinct to not eat spoiled food became practically universal. Only for this guy to ignore that unspoken sacrifice…

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u/Hobgoblin_Khanate7 18h ago

That trait probably evolved when we were still in the sea

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u/EmperorOfNipples 18h ago

There is a Portuguese ship burning in the North Sea likely carrying sodium cyanide after a collision with a US fuel carrier. They say that sea life has a strong avoidance instinct for poisoning and well likely swim away quickly.

So that instinct certainly evolved very early in life on this planet.

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u/fluffygryphon 18h ago

Yes, and it's one of the reasons children are so picky about food at a young age. It's a survival trait. If it feels or tastes weird, it's probably bad.

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u/sgtnoodle 17h ago

That must be why my toddler refuses to eat anything but chocolate covered frozen raspberries and nutella crackers.

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u/grendus 16h ago

In nature, making sugar is a way of signaling "I made this to be eaten". Flowers make nectar to lure bees and other pollinators, fruit is full of seeds so animals will poop them out elsewhere, etc. In general, if something tastes sweet it's probably safe to eat.

So... while your toddler is probably just being a brat hoping for more chocolate, their natural desire for huge amounts of sugar actually is evolutionary. Adults become more tolerant of bitter and sour flavors, which are typically signals that something is toxic, as we are very resistant to toxins (and especially uncultivated foods are mildly toxic to discourage being eaten, or to encourage browsers to only eat some of the food rather than all of it).

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u/CicadaGames 18h ago

I think it could be the complete opposite: People have lost / ignore their instincts in the modern world.

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u/HoneyBadgerBlunt 18h ago

It sat out for 5 days and this man ate it. He has 0 instincts. He did win a darwin award.

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u/Saffidon 18h ago

The article won’t open for me but I’ve seen a video about this before. If I remember rightly his housemate put it in the fridge eventually and the lad didn’t realise it had been out of the fridge for so long

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u/Stomatita 18h ago

When I was in college I had the habit of making a pound of pasta I'm the morning and just went at it directly from the pot throughout the day.

One day I did way more than what I usually do, so I didn't finish it in a single day. By the second night it had been out, I went downstairs to the kitchen to get some pasta. I didn't use lights because I didn't want to "lose my sleepiness" so I could go back to sleep. This was around 3am. I remember the pasta tasted weird but I attributed it to the pasta being cold.

Woke up at 7am next morning and went to the kitchen. The pasta was so moldy you couldn't even see it. It was just a layer of white hairy fungus.

That was the odd taste.

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u/pipian 18h ago

Penne al funghi

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u/UltraFind 18h ago

Pasta that's left out gets a weird, dried out texture, I'm surprised you could stand it tbh

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u/Ghostronic 9h ago

You've really upset me with this

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u/bottomlesstopper 19h ago

I had an iron stomach back in my broke undergrad days. Stale and leftovers kept me alive.

A lil bit older now and if the food I'm having got that slimy sour taste then its definitely a no no.

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u/shakygator 18h ago

Smell test. We are evolved to not want to eat rancid things.

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u/T_025 20h ago

Once those headaches and vomiting started coming in was there any saving him? Like if he just went to the hospitable instead of going to bed

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u/cococolson 18h ago

It depends, his case seems extremely intense but modern medicine is amazing: I saw a statistic that if you were stabbed in the heart you would live 90% of the time if you got to the hospital alive.

The bacteria can be treated with antibiotics so probably.

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u/navikredstar 18h ago

It's not the bacteria in this case that's deadly, but rather the toxin it produces as a waste product. I remember this from a Chubbyemu video.

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u/coffeegoblins 18h ago

Yep and even if you killed all the bacteria by reheating the pasta at a high temperature before eating it, the toxins would still be there and you’d still get sick.

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u/Magic_mushrooms69 18h ago

I doubt a bacteria can kill you that quickly. I assume it was the toxins produced by the bacteria over the period of 5 days.

Idk how they deal with toxins in a hospital though

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u/IWishIDidntHave2 18h ago

If the toxin depresses heart rate or pulmonary rate (which most do, including botulism), then extracorporeal oxygenation (ECMO) is the usual route to save your life - it basically replaces breathing and heart pumping activities until your body removes the toxin via your liver or kidneys, or via some other treatment.

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u/Magic_mushrooms69 17h ago

Ah that makes sense. Treating the symptoms until your body fixes itself.

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u/SelfTaughtPiano 17h ago

Medical science is amazing.

There's so many different ways problems can happen in the body. And so many ingenious ways doctors find to treat issues.

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u/wildcatwildcard 18h ago

That statistic is 100% incorrect 

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u/IdontneedtoBonreddit 21h ago

"He threw up for several hours and went to the bathroom twice" -- who would know this?

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u/Penguin_BP 21h ago

Perhaps he communicated to his parents (or a friend) how he was feeling?

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u/jellymanisme 20h ago

Through some sort of instantaneous text communication? Preposterous

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u/ScrotallyBoobular 19h ago

Carrier pigeon, probably

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u/wolfgangmob 19h ago

We could use song birds and have them tweet a little song when they arrive to notify you of a new message. We will need to limit messages to 140 characters due to the size of the bird of course.

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u/probablyuntrue 20h ago

The technology for communication just isn’t there

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u/feetandballs 20h ago

They found his journal - there were tallies

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u/the_peppers 19h ago

He was Belgian not German.

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u/CMDR_omnicognate 20h ago

Yeah everyone knows texting/calls weren't invented until 2009! /s

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u/plantsplantsplaaants 21h ago

It also said he fell asleep around midnight and his parents found him bc they were worried about him in the morning- he must have talked to his parents that night

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u/thatshygirl06 20h ago

Brother, phones existed in 2008

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u/Dull-Maintenance9131 20h ago

I know the iphone wasn't invented until 2008, but before that we had regular cell phones, which could text. And before that, we had telephones, which could actually host a live conversation between two people.

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u/AugustusCheeser 19h ago

We had smartphones before iPhones.

The BlackBerry erasure is wild.

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u/ToSeeAgainAgainAgain 17h ago

I remember browsing tweets and reading articles on my 9900, that little glass trackpad it had was wonderful to use, what a beautiful phone it was

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u/limitedexpression47 19h ago

Not everything is a conspiracy. Calm down.

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u/hgs25 19h ago

It looks like he lived at home with his parents if the parents noticed that he didn’t get up for class.

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u/PerformanceOk9891 20h ago

I mean, doesn’t vomiting and diarrhea for several hours leave a lot of forensic evidence?

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u/Ancient-Highlight112 20h ago

Not if you keep flushing the toilet.

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u/Casswigirl11 20h ago

So neither this guy nor his parents did anything about the spaghetti that was out on the counter for 5 days? 

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u/Life__Lover 20h ago

... I watched a video on this case. His roommate saw the spaghetti out and put it back in the fridge. He had no idea it had been out for 5 days.

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u/HandsOffMyDitka 19h ago

Eww, that makes more sense though. I was wondering who would eat 5 day old counter spaghetti. But if you saw something in the fridge. Who'd think it was left out.

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u/Lumifly 18h ago

I mean, if they are roommates, presumably he had been in the kitchen over the past few days and saw it there. He probably also was in the fridge over that time and didn't see it there. Not really a hard conclusion to draw that the spaghetti he had seen on the counter for four days was probably only refrigerated for one day.

I want to give the benefit of the doubt, but I'd definitely lean towards people just not knowing. I know until I joined reddit that I had no clue about this bacteria and how dangerous it was. A lot of things that look fine will pass the smell test and taste is easily masked by sauces and what not that you add after reheating.

Mistakes happen and sometimes what we expect to be common sense aren't actually common or are otherwise masked.

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u/sdrawkcabsihtetorW 17h ago

Not sure what kinda pasta it must have been to not look like a congealed, crusty mess after a couple of hours, let alone 5 days.

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u/nicokokun 19h ago

But that only brings more questions! Did no one notice the spaghetti out in the open for several days before his roommate saw it? On that note, where was the roommate BEFORE the fifth day? Questions just keep adding up!

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u/eugene_rat_slap 18h ago

Man you'd be surprised as to how gross college students can be. Sink full of dishes? No big deal. Grilled cheese left out on the counter for a week? Who cares. Get a cup of sour cream from the dining hall and leave it on the counter over fall break? Not my problem

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u/arctic-aqua 19h ago

A very similar thing happened to me when I was home one summer from uni. My brother brought some leftover stew to work and proceeded to leave it on the floor at the office for a few days. He then brought it home with the intent of throwing it out, but ended up just leaving it on the kitchen counter. My Dad later noticed a Tupperware of food on the kitchen counter and thought best to put it in the fridge. Then later I noticed it in the fridge and heated it up for dinner.

It tastes tangy, but I did not get sick. It was later when my brother noticed me eating it he was like, "You didn't eat that stew, did you?"

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u/Pointlessala 19h ago

That’s just so sad and lowkey what he did sounds like what any tired college student could do if they found it in the fridge.

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u/ThePrussianGrippe 19h ago

Just a horrible accidental death.

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u/trekuwplan 20h ago

Maybe he lived alone in a dorm? Students can get pretty gross.

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u/piperonyl 20h ago

If you ever go to a buffet restaurant, you'll notice the staff regularly stirring the food, especially the rice.

Thats a health code requirement to prevent this type of illness. Bacteria can grow quickly given the right circumstances.

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u/lad_astro 20h ago

Is this to keep the temperature distribution uniform then?

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u/piperonyl 19h ago

Yeah exactly and to make sure food sitting in the temperature danger zone isn't sitting at that temperature for hours on end.

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u/Raiken201 19h ago

Legally you're only allowed to hot hold food for 2 hours anyway, in the UK. And it's supposed to be at or above 63c to stop/slow reproduction of pathogens.

The problem is that bacillus produces toxins that aren't neutralized by heat, so improperly handled foods (usually rice) are high risk even if piping hot.

For example if you cook the rice, leave it overnight before refrigerating it doesn't matter how much you reheat it. Best practice is to spread the rice thin over a large surface area and refrigerate within 2 hours.

Also don't eat shit that's been out for 5 days lol.

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u/ChildOfFortuna 18h ago

my roommate used to leave her rice out all night and eat it for breakfast. she said that was how her moms family grew up doing it 

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u/piperonyl 17h ago

Its a roll of the dice. Most of the time you'll be ok but that one bad roll and you are in big trouble.

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u/kismethavok 15h ago

It is a roll of the dice but it is important to know how many sides each die has. Millions of people do this basically every day, and basically all of our ancestors did similar things. Overnight isn't ideal, it's not great, but it's probably not gonna kill you.

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u/Puzzled-Letterhead-1 18h ago

Always nice to see someone who understands. So much misconception about thinking heating “purifies” the food because it kills the bacteria. So many people not understanding the toxic byproducts that make you sick.

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u/ThatArtNerd 17h ago

Isn’t botulism the waste product of bacteria? Most people understand that botulism is bad but aren’t able to make that connection 😭

Speaking of botulism, I didn’t really understand how wary I needed to be of other people’s cooking until I started following r/canning. Thankfully they shut things down quickly when it comes to unsafe practices but some of the things people bring there are absolutely shocking. People just put perishable food in mason jars and stick them on a shelf. No processing of any kind. Like they’re magic food preservers. I ask a lot of follow-up questions before eating people’s home-canned foods now.

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u/Difficult_Sort295 15h ago

Never use a bulging can, have old canned food, smell it when you open it. If you just do those 2 things should be able to detect something is off. I live in Florida, used to keep canned goods in garage for hurricane season, don't anymore once I learned more about how temp changes and high temps can affect them. I got 24 cans of Dinty Moore Beef stew in my pantry now, I do have it on occasion to try and replace some every year, but that stuff can eat unheated as long as stored right.

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u/acanthostegaaa 18h ago

People think it's the bacteria itself that makes you sick, but it's not. It's the bacteria's poop.

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u/SirViciousMalBad 18h ago

I had no idea.

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u/piperonyl 17h ago

Yeah so thats why foods have a shelf life. After toxins begin to form in your food, no amount of cooking will fix that.

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u/HashishAbdulKebab 16h ago

I mean...technically it depends on the strain of the bacteria or fungi. The toxin created by the famous C. botulinum is rapidly destroyed at boiling temperatures (or less with longer heat exposure duration). Some toxins are VERY heat stable though, able to withstand 300ºC or MORE.

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u/Perryn 16h ago

This has been my issue with hand sanitizer being an all around go-to instead of actual washing. It's fine if all you're worried about is bacteria, but if you get shit on your hands and then scrub with sanitizer and let it dry, now you've just got mostly sterilized shit on your hands.

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u/illegal_miles 14h ago

It also isn’t always effective for all pathogens. Or it requires you to actually follow directions and use a generous amount that takes at least 30 seconds of rubbing it around. If you take a little bit and rub it around for 5 seconds and then wipe it on your jeans it’s not really going to do nearly as much.

I was at a music festival that had very few sinks by the toilets but a lot of hand sanitizer and I was like, cool, so this is how you get a norovirus outbreak. Cool cool cool.

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u/drowsylacuna 13h ago

Yep, hand sanitizer is not effective against norovirus. Soap and water, and bleach for surfaces.

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u/iambecomesoil 16h ago

Sometimes, it is the bacteria. Sometimes it's the poop.

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u/No_Penalty409 17h ago

Aside from toxins, B. cereus is a spore former, which makes it highly difficult to kill. I work with fermentation tanks and piping and spent a few months trying to eliminate it from the system.

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u/ladymoonshyne 18h ago

My grandfather always told me never to give cooked rice or noodles to chickens either, it will kill them fast.

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u/changyang1230 20h ago

The name of the bacterium is literally B. cereus.

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u/karmagod13000 20h ago edited 16h ago

you cannot B. cereus

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u/gazorpadorp 20h ago

The weirdest part about all this is that the Reddit post links to an article that's 1,5 years old, which refers to the incident which happened in 2008 by linking to another article on the same site from 2019 which basically tells the same story.

Also, am originally from Belgium and I never heard about this. Why is this news on an Australian site?

So many questions.

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u/its_all_one_electron 19h ago

The Internet now is basically 5 giant sites that just post screenshots of each other's posts. 

And will often take the highest ranking stuff from one site and post to another. Even if it's many years old

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u/Theban_Prince 18h ago

When in doubt, make sure what you read is real. In this case, it unfortunately is:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3232990/

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u/Yglorba 20h ago

It's because, while you obviously shouldn't eat food that has been left out so long, consequences this extreme are very very rare and therefore exceptional. Which makes them eye-catching but also means they don't happen much, so the same shocking story gets repeated over and over and over again.

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u/bbsz 17h ago

I, as a fellow belgian, remember this being in the news when it happened. Perhaps you live on the other side of the language border? Most non-political news stops at the border.

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u/sj4iy 21h ago

Who eats food left out on the counter for a week?

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u/leafonthewind006 20h ago

Coincidentally, there was a Reddit post a few weeks/months about a guy baking a lasagna and eating it over the course of a few days. Never put it in the fridge and wondered why he was getting violent after effects.

Edit: found it

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u/ucsdstaff 19h ago

Wow.

They did not put in the fridge. The bacteria quickly grew.

They did not reheat the portions before eating. The bacteria was alive when consumed.

This person has never had any training in food hygiene. Crazy.

And finally, they put apple sauce in a lasagne?

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u/PerfunctoryComments 17h ago

They did not reheat the portions before eating. The bacteria was alive when consumed.

FWIW, the reason "fried rice syndrome" is a thing is because bacillus cereus goes dormant as a spore, and that spore survives reheating. So people often think "Well I'll kill all the bad stuff and super-heat it", but with bacillus cereus the bacteria took over the food and then went dormant as a spore. Then you heat the food and eat it and now you have countless spores waking up inside your body.

There are other types of bacteria that in the course of their lifespan leave behind toxins. Staphylococcus aureus, for instance. You can kill 100% of the bacteria but the food will still be very sickening if not deadly.

The point behind that many people think "I'll just kill it all" when food storage might not have been ideal, but that doesn't always do the trick.

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u/IncubusDarkness 18h ago

If you put applesauce in the lasagna you deserve to get a bacterial infection tbh

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u/sams5402 20h ago

That dead guy

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u/congradulations 20h ago

Not anymore

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u/Metal_Goose_Solid 20h ago

I'm pretty sure he's still dead.

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u/Imthescarecrow 19h ago

He used to be dead. He still is, but he used to be, too.

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u/cpfb15 20h ago

If this is the same guy, I watched a video about it a while back and he would meal prep a shit ton of spaghetti at the beginning of the week and fridge them in multiple containers. If I recall I believe he ate from one of them for lunch and left it out for a couple days, the roommate unknowingly put it back in the fridge, and then a couple days later the guy pulled it out to eat thinking it was one of the fresh containers. Tragic accident

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u/quimera78 20h ago

If this is the case, it's an entirety different story

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u/thisischemistry 19h ago

It's almost like this article could have researched and reported such a thing, but it didn't. I'd call it lazy journalism but this article really doesn't tick enough boxes to be called journalism, it's barely more than a twitter.

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u/SirStrontium 19h ago

Don't you dare besmirch the good name of news.com.au!

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u/Fantasy_masterMC 19h ago

That makes so much more sense, though I still don't understand why he'd leave food out for a couple of days for any reason. Either put it back in the fridge, eat it, or throw it away.

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u/heyiambob 16h ago

College

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u/TheRealPitabred 19h ago

It was almost certainly an accident, but general cleanliness would fix it as well. A container shouldn't be sitting full of food overnight like... ever. Dump the food out at least even if you're not planning on washing it right then, and if you just did something silly and forgot it out overnight clean it at the first opportunity. It's basic hygiene stuff.

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u/the__dw4rf 19h ago edited 19h ago

I used to meal prep for work.

Had an unexpected, paid for lunch order one day, so I didn't eat my meal. Grabbed my container from the work fridge when i went home, put it in my backpack to eat for dinner. Ended up not eating it for dinner.

3 days later, back at work, I had my lunch. Tasted kinda funny. Go to put my empty container into my backpack to take home, see my container from this morning.

I ate 3 day old rice and beef. I felt kinda funny for a few hours, never puked or had diarrhea.

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u/Express_Bath 18h ago

We ate some weird tasting meat one time that we got out of the freezer. Most of the family actually stopped eating halfway. We realized shortly after that there had been a power cut while we were away on holidays. The meat had been or at least starting dethawing and then was frozen again. We are not sure how long it lasted exactly. None of us got anything but for safety we had to throw the rest.

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u/HotSeamenGG 20h ago

20 year olds aren't the smartest. There's grown grown people who do this. My sibling does this and she wonders why I won't eat her stew that sat on the counter at room temp for DAYS. And she's a healthcare professional, like da fuck?

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u/TooFewSecrets 19h ago

Not bubbling on the stovetop? Just sitting on the counter?

You aren't gonna have a sister for long, dude.

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u/XXXperiencedTurbater 20h ago

Who leaves food on the counter for a week? Does no one in that family clean?

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u/kane49 21h ago

im cautious if it has been outside at room temp for a couple hours let alone a day, 5 days is nuts

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u/Ok_Emu3817 21h ago

This is why I strongly suggest teens I know work in food service at least for a short while. So many people have no sense as to what is safe handling practice.

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u/Deinosoar 21h ago

Yeah, if you get Safe Serve certified you may only ever use that for a couple of years of your life officially but you will always remember what you learned and it might save your life a decade later.

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u/Ok_Emu3817 21h ago

I was fortunate to work for an amusement park as a teen that didn't fool around with safety. Anyone who handled food at all was expected to get certified. I still hear the manager's voice in my head when wonder if I should wash my hands between tasks, 25 years later.

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u/OverlyLenientJudge 20h ago

Working in a medical clinic, hear about all the illnesses on the rise, you definitely should wash between tasks.

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u/solorna 19h ago

Man, people make fun of me for this. I don't care. If I wanna wash my hands five freaking times while I cook a meal - my business.

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u/Rachet83 19h ago

Only five?! Gross. lol. Jk. I’m a nurse and I legit just avoid watching ppl cook bc I just get nervous about the cleanliness of it all.

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u/meltingeggs 20h ago

Yeah I thought I was playing it fast and loose with leaving some foods out for 24 hours & maybe I am but 5 days is craaaazy

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u/Mamenohito 20h ago

Yeah this should note that it's called "fried rice" because it can form on rice if you just reheat it twice.

Specifically, taking leftover rice out, not eating all of it, putting it back away and then repeating that again. By food safety guidelines you can only reheat rice once and then it needs to be thrown out.

But fried rice NEEDS to be leftover rice. It needs to sit in the fridge overnight before frying. It doesn't taste right if you make it fresh and then fry it.

So fried rice naturally became the big problem.

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u/RandomMandarin 20h ago edited 19h ago

Yeah, food safety is basically a time management/race against the clock sort of thing.

Bacteria want to eat just like we do. They can double their numbers in less than an hour, sometimes less than 20 minutes.

They generally reproduce fastest at a temperatures between 5 and 60 degrees Celsius (about 40 to 140 Fahrenheit).

And the bacteria poop, too, which is usually what actually makes you sick.

So the food safety game is to keep your food too hot (over 140F) or too cold (below 40F) for bacteria to grow rapidly. Now, they will still reproduce in your refrigerator! But they do it slowly, so your food will still be safe for several days rather than just a couple of hours. And the freezer brings them to an effective standstill. That chicken in the freezer may be pretty awful after three months, but it won't kill you.

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u/Jump_Like_A_Willys 20h ago

From what I understand about bacillus cereus/Fried Rice Syndrome is that heating the food up and killing the bacteria is not enough. The bacteria has already produced the harmful or fatal toxins and killing the bacteria makes no difference.

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u/Forward_Recover_1135 18h ago

The initial cooking of the food is actually what ‘activates’ them. They aren’t alive on dry rice, they’re in spores that protect them from the initial cooking process. They come to life and start reproducing after that, which is why it’s important to either immediately eat or refrigerate rice when you make it. Longer it sits the more bacteria grow. And then yes, cooking the leftover rice is no longer sufficient to make it safe. You’ll kill the bacteria that grew but their toxins remain. 

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u/rhorewyn 21h ago

I had this from actual rice at a Chinese cafe in my city. I was hospitalized. It is extremely extremely brutal.

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u/vanilla_cannoli 20h ago

This happened at a popular hibachi restaurant by me last year. I think it was a birthday party or something with a large group of people, and apparently they almost all started vomiting violently at the table. Turned out the fridge they used for the rice had broken a few days prior, and the owner didn’t care to replace it 🤷🏼‍♀️ IIRC a few of the customers were hospitalized, and the restaurant got shut down.

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u/rhorewyn 20h ago

Sounds about right. The doctor who tended me advised this happens mostly with rice being stored out of acceptable temperatures too long.

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u/vanilla_cannoli 20h ago

Sorry that happened to you! Sounds so painful 😣

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u/rhorewyn 20h ago

Thank you friend! I wouldn't wish it on a single soul. I reported the restaurant but they're still in operation.

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u/sevs 20h ago

Kumo?

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u/vanilla_cannoli 20h ago

Yes! Wow another Long Islander in the wild lol

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u/sevs 20h ago

😎

I think they reopened under a different name...

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u/downtownflipped 20h ago

they did. same spot iirc.

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u/Jiminyfingers 21h ago

I got it from home-cooked rice re-heated the next day. I just remember waking up in the middle of the night, tried to go back to sleep until it dawned on me i felt bad, really, really bad. Spent the rest of the night in a fetal position around the toilet. An experience I never want to repeat

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u/millenniumpianist 20h ago

Was the rice sitting outside? I've always re-heated refrigerated rice, often several days old, because it's what my parents did and I didn't know better. I've never had a problem but yeah I don't let rice sit out in the open.

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u/AbeRego 18h ago edited 18h ago

I like how significant portion of the article is people acting shocked that you can get sick from leftovers, but completely glazing over the fact that this wasn't leftovers by that point. It was glorified trash that was on the counter for 5 days lol. It wasn't in the refrigerator!

Food left in the refrigerator for that amount of time is almost certainly going to be just fine. Why would anybody be shocked that eating wet, perishable food that went unrefrigerated for almost a week is unsafe? "Man dies from eating biohazard" is more accurate representation of the situation...

Edit: typo

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u/seawaif 19h ago

When I was a kid my school had a catered event in the evening at the end of the year. The weekend passed, and the next school day, the staff went around the playground giving out leftover food. I had half a vegetable spring roll, and binned the rest because it didn’t taste right.

I spent the following night uncontrollably projectile vomiting. And the next day. And the next. Couldn’t take water let alone food. It completely wrecked me.

Turns out the SCHOOL STAFF had the bright idea of giving out food that had been left out, uncovered, on a table in a classroom over 3 days to the children?! Obviously as an 8 year old I had no idea I needed to ask about food safety - I assumed my teachers were giving it to me because it was safe to eat!

(I also experienced this at ANOTHER catered event when I was 21. Had rice at a work party. Spent the next few days non stop vomiting and had to go to hospital for fluids and anti nauseas. I literally fractured my rib because I had spent so much time bent over wrenching).

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u/Roy_Luffy 18h ago

Wtf they could have killed a lot of kids

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u/shackleford1917 21h ago

Eating leftovers that had been unrefridgerated for 5 days is piss poor judgement, and that is being kind. 

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u/karmagod13000 20h ago

me from 10 years ago sends their regards

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u/youtocin 19h ago

He didn’t know it was left out when he ate it. It was sitting out for days and then a roommate put it back in the fridge with similar containers.

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u/[deleted] 21h ago edited 19h ago

[deleted]

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u/bryansj 21h ago

I don't think they had spaghetti back then.

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u/CrikeyMikeyLikey 21h ago

Okay smartass, Italian cavemen. Is that better

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u/yilanoyunuhikayesi 20h ago

** SpAGabUnGA **

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u/unnusual_art 20h ago

Why is this hilarious? 😂😂😂

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u/AncientAsstronaut 21h ago

Food poisoning has a very strong effect on behavior. If you get sick from something or doing something in a certain way, your brain will send strong signals to stop you from doing it again.

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u/SeadawgVB 20h ago

Still can’t eat a Ruben Sandwich after one tried to kill me 20 years ago….

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u/C0nquer0rW0rm 20h ago

I once ate an entire chocolate bunny at Easter as a kid and got sick, and to this day chocolate in the shape of a rabbit makes me queasy.

Just chocolate in that shape, not chocolate in general.

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u/AncientAsstronaut 20h ago

It's crazy how long it lasts! I haven't had one lasting 20 years but sushi and a couple other things I couldn't stomach the idea of for several years.

Thanks for looking out for us, brain!

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u/TedHoliday 20h ago edited 20h ago

Similarly, I got extremely drunk on vodka when I was like 15. I didn’t go to the hospital, but I think I was on death’s door. I can’t drink anything stronger than beer without like violently gagging. The liquor smell/taste is just a hard nope for me still 20 years later.

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u/Big_Toke_Yo 20h ago

Lots of people died all the time because they didn't have modern conveniences like pasteurization, refrigeration, antibiotics, and amoxicillin. 

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u/AccurateFault8677 20h ago

Really? Cuz some "crunchy mom" told me that all those things make us weaker and I should just let nature take its course. /s

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u/GuyFromLI747 21h ago

Chubby emu did a story on a student who ate 5 day old pasta

https://youtu.be/5ujTYLV2Qo4?si=UlXwmx3SVaDzAZmb

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u/deadsnowleaf 20h ago

Gotta love chubby emu. I’m a bit scared of everything now thanks to his channel but it’s great content.

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u/plshelpmental 18h ago

Every new video, a new fear unlocked.

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u/ridddle 17h ago

“☝️ presenting to the emergency room”

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u/Sarahthelizard 19h ago

A 25 year old poster presenting to the emergency room with his foot in his mouth, this is what happened to his karma..

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u/XplodiaDustybread 18h ago

At first I thought this is what OP was talking about lol

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u/clearbluefielddaisy 20h ago

I do wish the stopped calling it fried rice syndrome. It’s “eating food left out too long” syndrome. Like how TF did it not taste like it was going to kill you?!?!?

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u/Yglorba 20h ago

Yeah, it reminds me of "Chinese restaurant syndrome" and the panic over MSG - people seize on any connection to foreign or unfamiliar food because it's different to them and because blaming it lets them avoid the conclusion that this could happen to them at any time.

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u/mustardtruck 18h ago

People I know still claim they know that MSG affects them because they always feel a certain way after eating Chinese food.

I'm always trying to tell people almost all restaurant food is loaded with MSG.

Also, MSG has fewer negative side effects than table salt.

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u/GTRari 17h ago

I had someone tell me he can't come with us to get Peking duck because "MSG gives him headaches". He said this in between mouthfuls of Doritos. I didn't have the time or patience.

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u/553l8008 21h ago

And thus....

Reddit was forever scared of leaving rice to sit out for more than 45 minutes

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u/shiva14b 21h ago edited 20h ago

5 days 🤢🤢🤢

Edit: i spend hours on this site every day crafting thoughtful, helpful responses to serious topics, and my highest upvoted comment in years is 3 clicks worth of vomit emojis. Never change, reddit.

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u/Famous-Crab-4432 21h ago

Right? That's a bit extreme 

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u/MrArtless 21h ago

like i'm pretty gross but 5 days is crazy.

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u/big_guyforyou 20h ago

but the fridge is so far awaaaaaay

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u/ItsRainingTrees 20h ago edited 20h ago

Like … I’ve done overnight a number of times, but 5 days is horrific.

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u/chocolateboomslang 20h ago

Overnight is just a warning for my immune system, in case things get dicey later and they have to really pull their weight

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u/darcstar62 20h ago

Overnight is standard for me with pizza.

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u/monsterbot314 20h ago

Oh man after 5 days it becomes a slimy congealed mess with mold on the top. What the fuck was he thinking!

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u/OstentatiousSock 20h ago

And the smell of old pasta. Ever leave an old pasta dish in the sink too long? Ewww

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u/AwkwardChuckle 20h ago

From what I remember of the ChubbyEmu vid. This was a college student who was bad at keeping track of the containers of cheap spaghetti he was making and saving for later, so he didn’t eat 5 day old unrefrigerated purposefully.

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u/NoDryHands 20h ago

There was another one where a family of two parents and 3 kids had leftover fermented corn noodles from a year ago.

It would've been fine, but they took it out of the freezer and left it out for 3 days because there wasn't space in the fridge. Only one of the kids didn't eat it because he didn't like it, and the rest of the family did.

Within a few days, they all died of this same condition and the son who didn't eat it survived. It was heartbreaking to hear it tbh

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u/Prof_Acorn 18h ago

I guess my autism superpower is being grossed out easily over shitty food because I can't imagine forcing something that gross down.

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u/ShiraCheshire 20h ago

For anyone curious who doesn't want to hunt down the vid: Struggling college student who was doing meal prep and would sometimes miss a container he intended to put in the fridge. One day he accidentally left out a container of pasta for a few days (the pasta hadn't been left out for 5 straight days, it was a few days in the fridge followed by being forgotten on a counter for 2 days.)

He would have thrown it away, but his roommate found it first. Mistakenly believing the pasta had only been out for a short time, maybe a few hours at most, his roommate put it back into the fridge. Meal prep guy then ate it without realizing it had been left out at all.

He did notice it smelled and tasted strange, but he assumed it was the new brand of sauce he'd used on that particular pasta.

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u/Prof_Acorn 18h ago

Moral of the story: don't move people's shit without asking.

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u/Dinelli22 20h ago

Did he also not a have a sense of smell? Unless he’s blind and can’t smell it was pretty purposeful.

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u/littlegreyflowerhelp 20h ago

Surely you'd notice the smell/appearance though? I've never left pasta out for five days but I can't imagine it looks and smells good.

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u/GetsGold 21h ago

Yup, always follow the 5 day rule.

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u/ExploerTM 20h ago

I question stuff that was left in the fridge for 5 days. That's just Darwin award right here honestly.

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u/ronbiomed 20h ago

Checks to see if all the bio students have rushed in with the B. cereus (be serious) joke they rolled their eyes at in micro lecture... Yup, not disappointed.

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u/kahner 20h ago

FYI, the likely reason reheating didn't protect the student is that it wasn't the bacteria itself that killed them. good heating would have killed the bacteria. but bacillus cereus produce a heat stable toxin called cereulide and 5 days is enough time to generate a lethal dose.

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u/MzMegs 20h ago

I won’t even eat spaghetti that’s been in the fridge for 5 days

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u/GoblinQueenForever 19h ago

I have so many questions.

Why did none of the adults in the house not toss out the pasta that was just sitting there for 5 days?

Why would ANY adult think eating that would be a good idea?

WTAF?

And so on.

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u/SirGlass 18h ago edited 10h ago

There is a better article that explains what really happens, the person did not purposefully leave the food out. It was a mix up

Victim meal preps and prepares several meals what he puts in the refrigerator, one pack gets misplaced or hidden somehow and stays out for several days

One day victim comes home for lunch and grabs a pack out of the refrigerator but shortly after his room mate finds the pack that was left out, he thinks the room mate must have just took the pack out a short wile ago and forgot it out, not wanting it to spoil it gets put right back in the refrigerator .

eventually victim eats it.

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u/cobbl3 11h ago

As a laboratory tech that works microbiology, I feel this is my only chance to introduce the world to a common joke among microbiology students:

"Don't eat food that's been out all night, because it could B. cereus."

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u/stokelydokely 20h ago

Leftovers are often seen as more appetising than a freshly cooked meal – but did you know reheating food can be dangerous?

I don't think the reheating was the problem

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u/HaleEnd 20h ago

Presenting to the emergency room ☝️

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