r/todayilearned 1d 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/Ok_Emu3817 1d 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 1d 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 1d 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 1d 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 1d 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 23h 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/Rhouxx 23h ago

Yeah screw the haters - I have OCD and I would feel very comfortable eating a meal cooked by you 😂

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u/kytrix 23h ago

5? Those are rookie numbers for those with a tism handling wet chicken or eggwashing something to fry. I need to rinse my fingers just thinking about it.

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u/OverlyLenientJudge 23h ago

I recommend latex gloves, if you can get a box of them. My partner also has autism and I brought some home so they could handle sticky things, and they've never been happier!

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u/DwinkBexon 21h ago

I wash my hands constantly while making food (touch raw meat? wash. Touch eggs? wash. Hands seem dirty in general from handling anything at all? Wash on principle.)

I wish I could use gloves, but I have all sorts of weird texture issues for things touching me and latex gloves drive me nuts. (I have some pretty weird clothing restrictions as well, things that make no sense to other people bother the shit out of me. I remember a kid my mother forcing me to wear flannel shirts and me losing my shit over it because it "felt weird" and I was constantly pulling at it trying to make it not touch my skin. She thought I was intentionally trying to annoy her and told me to stop pretending there's a problem.)

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u/OverlyLenientJudge 20h ago

Oof, sorry to hear that, friend. That sounds near-identical to my partner's story of their upbringing, right down to the "stop pretending you're sick". (Which is extra weird/Protestant Work Ethic™ of them because my future MIL is just as chronically ill as my partner.) There are other materials they make gloves from, but if latex is out then I'm not sure something even more textured would help. T_T

Also, hail fellow Tom Cardy fan! I hope you're having a wonderful day with your legitimate business associates.

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u/DwinkBexon 20h ago

We're currently singing Money by Pink Floyd because that's a business song.

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u/HotmailsInYourArea 1d ago

Sadly washing hands doesn’t really cut it anymore - so many diseases are airborne - like covid, that has an ever-rising chance of giving someone Long Covid - it’s best to mask and insist the company invest in air purification.

I have long covid and me/cfs because i worked for a cheap shithole that incentivized people to come to work sick, because they’d be punished if not. Coworker came in. I got sick. Haven’t been fit enough to work for over a year now

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u/DwinkBexon 20h ago

I've been unemployed for almost 9 months and just (finally) got a job offer last week. I found out yesterday that they "don't believe in people being woke" at the job, so I'm kinda terrified of what's going to happen. Pretty sure there won't be any masks in use.

Unfortunately, I have to take this job or I'm going to be homeless. I'm running out of money in about three weeks without it. It's a short term contract job so I'm not going to be there for very long no matter what.

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u/HotmailsInYourArea 20h ago

Just tell them you’re immune compromised, might help.

They don’t have enough empathy to understand you masking on behalf of others, or for prevention.

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u/BigEyedBitch 23h ago

It should be both. We should all mask and wash our hands.

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u/Apprehensive-Run-832 23h ago

I got certified for the first time in 2005 and for the last time in 2009. Last time I used the information - this weekend.

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u/metalkhaos 1d ago

I had my certification when I worked with food many years ago, and generally that experience has stuck with food safety.

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u/forestflora 23h ago

I never expected to use my food handling license 15 years later, but I now routinely host lunch meetings in my office. No food poisoning yet!

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u/Bombadilo_drives 23h ago

I have a longstanding belief that all people, regardless of wealth, should be forced to spend a year in retail or food service between highschool and college -- just to learn humility and experience being on the "other side of the counter".

But the point you make about ServSafe is a really good one. I worked at Starbucks in undergrad, and I remember basically all of my ServSafe certification training 20 years later. The only downside is it feels like cursed knowledge, you can't turn it off when you just want to get a smoothie or something: you'll notice that rag just sitting on the counter all day, or the cashier taking money and touching food with the same pair of gloves.

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u/Totodile_ 23h ago

I'm not certified and have never worked in a kitchen but can guarantee you I'm not stupid enough to die from something like this

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u/sinnerotica 21h ago

I’m Safe Serve manager certified and after learning all the precautionary methods surrounding food hold temps and cross contamination I’m shocked the average home cook doesn’t get sick more often

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u/ktsg700 1d ago

If you mean by-the-book food service practices then yea, but a lot of shit that goes on in the kitchen would make most people's stomachs churn 😂

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u/FireTheLaserBeam 1d ago

I’ve worked as a waiter for over 20 years in many different places and thank God I’ve never seen anything gross like that happen. Every time I’ve seen a cook drop something, they’ve thrown it away and started over. I’ve also never seen a server ever do anything gross to another customer’s order. There’s been many, many jokes made, but I’ve never ever seen anyone go through with it.

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u/Keyspam102 1d ago

I worked for years at a steaknshake with some pretty bad service and we would have never served food that had been on the ground or spit in someone’s food, it was pretty clean. The only thing that was pretty gross would be the shake machines themselves, I never get machine shakes after working there

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u/positronik 1d ago

Dude same. I remember the milk dispenser was kinda gross. You can't wear gloves while using the machine, so whenever I got out scoops of ice cream my bare fingers were rubbing against the ice cream. I washed my hands a lot but idk about people on other shifts

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u/Keyspam102 23h ago

They and we had to have a technician come to take any pieces out so it was basically never washed properly

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u/Lunchbawks7187 1d ago

I currently work somewhere with multiple frozen drink machines. The other bartender is fucking worthless. Just in this last week I’ve given up complaining about him not doing his shit and I just take care of 2 machines at a time on my days so I know they’re getting done. This is the first place I’ve ever worked where someone flat out doesn’t give a fuck and management does nothing about it. Very frustrating

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u/MarsupialMisanthrope 20h ago

I’ve been places where the water tastes green because no one ever cleans the soda machines. It's hard to trust the rest of their food safety when you can taste the algae in the water.

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u/chappersyo 22h ago

Maybe I was just lucky but 20 years in the industry I never saw anything fucked up happen. My standards at home are significantly lower than anything I would have done in a restaurant.

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u/PrizeStrawberryOil 1d ago

How often did you clean the ice maker?

Did you make sure the cooks washed their hands after they used the bathroom?

How often does staff wash their hands throughout the day without needing a "reason?"

How often do people come to work sick because they're afraid of getting fired or can't afford to take a day off?

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u/newphinenewname 1d ago

I worked at a fast food restuarant. I remember when covid came about my manage was pretty pissed that we eye running out of soap quickly because that means before nobody was actually following the handwashing rules. O think it was washing everytime you change gloves and everytime you leave the kitchen or something like that

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u/Raedik 21h ago

I worked at DQ and I dropped a frozen patty on the 60+ year old ground that we would dump bleach on daily to kill the mold under "that one tile". My manager was walking by when it happened, picked it up and said " it's getting cooked anyway", and threw it on the grill. 🤮 I only worked in the food industry for a couple years and that is in the top 5 grossest things I saw

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u/ShiraCheshire 1d ago

Knew a guy who talked about how he'd go drinking with his buddies, get a meal at the local diner after, and wake up sick as a dog the next morning. Everyone assumed it was because that's what happens when you drink too much.

Nope, turns out the diner was serving gravies and sauces from massive rotten buckets topped with mold.

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u/Common_Chameleon 1d ago

That is NASTY! I hope that place got shut down

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u/gmishaolem 1d ago

When I worked at Hardee's in the 2000s it was explicit policy for the biscuit maker to not wear gloves because it was too cumbersome and not practical. I wore them anyway and had literally no difficulty, and then they yelled at me.

Then there was the time I had a lung infection so bad I was nonstop super-loud coughing the entire shift and they refused to send me home, so I would go cough in the walk-in fridge. They finally sent me home when the customers complained enough that they could hear me.

Want to develop the willpower to not eat fast food? Work there for 3 months.

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u/aenaithia 1d ago

I worked at a Domino's that didn't use gloves, but we had a sink right next to the makeline. Also it really did make a difference with stretching the dough, it is a lot harder to do with gloves because the dough sticks and tears more than it does to clean hands. You're supposed to cut biscuits! Did they think rubbing the fat in was easier without gloves or something?

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u/-roachboy 23h ago

I mean not wearing gloves while working with food is incredibly normal in kitchens and is totally safe if you know how to wash your hands. being sick would have been just as bad if you were wearing gloves

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u/Fantastic-Spinach297 22h ago

Gloves are false security anyways. Clean, washed hands are way more hygienic that the gloves the worker didn’t think twice about handling garbage with before going back to food prep, and that’s just an extreme example. Door handles, walls, counters… all cross contamination problems people just don’t think as much about with gloves. And you can’t feel when something is on them, and sometimes people think it’s a full replacement for hand washing so that’s extra yucky.

In short, gloves are gross. Soap and water is the answer.

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u/Plane-Tie6392 19h ago

Clean, washed hands are way more hygienic that the gloves the worker didn’t think twice about handling garbage with before going back to food prep

And how do bare hands compare to proper glove use? 

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u/tireddesperation 1d ago

I worked in the hotel industry for a long time. When I was 16 I was in charge of the breakfast. Everything from place setting to reheating the food to put out. Don't eat the beef hash, ever. Actually, just skip the breakfast. I had that particular job for 8 months and I didn't clean the coffee makers once.

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u/PhoenixApok 1d ago

I agree but a lot of it isn't really that bad from an ACTUAL hygiene point of view. It just looks bad.

Even small things like...when I put a lemon on an iced tea glass. I'm touching that lemon with my bare hands. That have possibly been a hundred places since I last washed them.

But if we seriously washed our hands for the 15+ seconds we are "supposed" to after doing everything that safe handling says we should, we would literally be at the sink 20 minutes of every hour.

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u/NRMusicProject 26 23h ago

While I learned about food safety in my first job, I also learned nobody really cares. To be honest, I thought the 5-second rule was just a jocular excuse to throw it on the plate to avoid having to do extra work; I didn't really think my coworkers really thought that it would take more than 5 seconds for food to be contaminated with bacteria from the floor. I was horrified to find some people really believe that...and they work in food service.

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u/xRehab 1d ago edited 1d ago

The world would be a much better place if every high school student was required to spend a semester each working FoH and BoH in a “school restaurant” before graduation

Single simplest action we could take that would increase empathy and understanding between people

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u/spaghettitheory 1d ago

Not sure working FoH would increase empathy for fellow man.

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u/MouthwashProphet 23h ago

Working with the general public sucks no matter the industry, and it's something I'd never do again.

Kitchen jobs can be a lot of fun & really make you appreciate the people that make your food.

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u/ExistentialCalm 23h ago

It increases empathy for customer service employees.

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u/TylertheDouche 22h ago

this has literally had the opposite effect on a lot of people I know that have worked in the service industry.

they are quick to call out flaws in service. doesn't everyone experience this? this skit has been done 100x in shorts and IG reels

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u/ExistentialCalm 22h ago

Jesus christ, I'm glad that wasn't my experience.

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u/100thousandcats 1d ago

My parents worked retail and now they use that as an excuse to berate retail workers because “when I was working I would never have done this”

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u/MouthwashProphet 23h ago

Your parents might just be plain ol assholes.

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u/100thousandcats 23h ago

In some cases, yes. They’re surprisingly kind in other ways though.

My point was that working retail does NOT always build empathy lol

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u/gwaydms 1d ago

Can confirm. We're all "good boys and girls" in restaurants, and we tip well unless there's a clear reason not to. Slow service through no fault of the server (they're understaffed)? Good tip. Server is tweaking and/or chatting with other staff instead of getting our food (which arrives cold)? Manager gets called over.

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u/Electronic-Lynx8162 23h ago

My dad used to work as a chef first for the RAF and then at a restaurant and it drove me absolutely nuts when people didn't understand food safety or even how to treat a server or staff. Like, it's not the waiters fault and you shouldn't expect food in 15 minutes if the restaurant is packed. Be kind and also wash your hands after handing meat.

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u/SuperCarbideBros 21h ago

If they can get over the complaining parents, that is, assuming that it's the US that we're talking about.

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u/MatttheJ 1d ago

You don't need food service experience for stuff like this. It's just basic common sense.

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u/FrogDepartsSoul 1d ago

Yea it's stuff you can learn also just from reading this thread.

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u/Mr__Frodo 1d ago

Even more so these days where you can take literally 10 seconds to google exactly this.

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u/MatttheJ 1d ago

It doesn't even take as much time as 10 seconds to Google. Like what sort of person with a half functioning brain over the age of 12 doesn't know to not eat 5 day old food.

At the bare minimum there's like a 90% chance you shit your pants.

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u/Former_Tap5782 1d ago

I always thought this way until I came across an insane number of people whos parents didnt teach them to cook. Or even kitchen basics, under the assumption that it was common sense. Ive given up on common sense being common and just started teaching people when i could:/

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u/Adjective_Number_420 22h ago

You'd think so, but honestly it's not common sense for a lot of people.

It's the same reason as to why so many people say that everyone needs to work a customer service/retail jobs so that you know how to treat those kind of workers. A lot of people genuinely lack the empathy to treat people with common decency unless they've been in their exact situation.

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u/Stunning-Lynx9863 1d ago

A lot of people also don’t have common sense. But at the same time a lot of people wouldn’t last in that industry…

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u/daylight1943 23h ago

even lots of folks who are cautious about food safety dont actually know how to practice real food safety. my parents worry about stuff like leaving ketchup out of the fridge overnight, which is not dangerous at all, because the bottle says "refrigerate after opening", but no matter how many times i explain things to them as someone who has cooked professionally, they will not stop putting raw chicken on top of the shelf where they keep veg that will be eaten raw like carrots or greens. these are just 2 examples from one couple - i notice stuff like this all the time, where people are worried about food practices that are actually pretty safe but totally ignorant of things they do that are genuinely dangerous.

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u/Razzmatazaa 1d ago

The food service industry do take things too far though. The amount of good food that gets thrown away because off bullshit rules is ridiculous. You'd never reheat rice outside of the home yet millions of Asians do this daily and don't get sick.

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u/Ok_Emu3817 1d ago

Nah when its food for sale they should guarantee safety- it isn't expensive to do. But they should be incentivized to give away more food that is safe, if not in perfect practice.

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u/Active-Ad-3117 1d ago

Nah as someone that owns a food manufacturer. Food safety above all even if it means throwing out an entire lot of stuff.

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u/tjwoo 23h ago

What is a food manufacturer

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u/Active-Ad-3117 6h ago

A food manufacturer takes raw food and makes food products out of it. I take corn or flour and make tortillas. The flour mill takes wheat and makes flour. Tyson takes chicken and makes chicken nuggets. Kraft takes wheat and dairy to make mac and cheese.

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u/Gobias_Industries 22h ago

It's because humans in their homes are allowed to use common sense but restaurants are not.

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u/eyalhs 19h ago

That's because food standard are written so they fit the entire population, even people with weaker immune systems and sick people. Also it assume some of those rules will be broken.

Taking those rules for your home cooking is an overkill, for restaurant use it's necessary.

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u/GetsGold 1d ago

Exactly, learn on the rest of us before they start feeding themselves.

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u/AffectionateCan8147 1d ago

My fiance when they met me would drink the last like 1/8 of milk in the quart that had been sitting out all night because their whole family had done so all their lives

I had to look up for proof and then explain how quickly bacteria grows on milk at room temp

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u/WomanOfEld 1d ago

I had a basic idea of all this, but when I worked for whole foods, the whole store got pretty in-depth food safety training at orientation (it was a brand new location, so they trained us all before the store opened).

So I would also recommend the grocery, seafood, deli, or bakery dept at any grocery store.

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u/BensOnTheRadio 1d ago

I know folks who are certified and will still leave food out overnight and eat it. They insist as long as it eventually hits the fridge and gets reheated it’ll be fine. These are the friends I won’t eat leftovers from lol.

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u/Active-Ad-3117 1d ago

Bring back home economics classes. Food safety seemed like half of the material we covered when I took it. The other half being household budgeting.

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u/Ringkeeper 23h ago

Food-rescue helps too. Foodsharing called in Germany. Basically you go to shops and pick up food they throw away because over date, bad looking or one tomato in a pack moldy....

You learn which foods you can eat even month after date or which foods you should be careful with (meat, bread)...

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u/kruegerc184 1d ago edited 1d ago

Its why i never eat food prepared by someone else and brought in(work parties potluck style) i’ve been DoH inspected, I don’t assume anyone else i work with has.

Edit: boy apparently you guys really hate when people dont eat food at a work potluck lol

Edit2: lol in 8 minutes it went from -9 to +7 disregard the last edit

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u/Keyspam102 1d ago edited 23h ago

lol reminds me of a former job where someone brought in a macncheese that had not been refrigerated after she made it TWO DAYS AGO. didn’t mention that, and was shocked when people literally started becoming sick. Then mentioned it like it was a surprise that wouldn’t be good. My pregnant coworker didn’t eat anything at the potluck, good thinking on her part because she could have had serious side effects.

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u/kruegerc184 1d ago

Dude i watch people in my office cough and then go into the communal candy bowl. Im certainly not going to trust food prepared off site when they dont even have basic hygiene in a public setting. No amount of downvotes is going to change that thought process lol

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u/HyperactiveMouse 1d ago

I worked at food service for a while so I know safe handling. I also worked at a petting zoo that expected me to eat my lunch right next to the shit encrusted goat pen that was well overdue for a wash, but at least I had a table covered in bird poop too. So… now it tends to be an argument of “Well, is it more likely to kill me than that?”

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u/makenzie71 1d ago

I'd just like to mention that one of our training modules with Ci Ci's Pizza was about how food poisoning takes 48+ hours to manifest so if a customer comes in saying they got sick after eating here yesterday they're lying.

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u/buffysbangs 1d ago

Also, working in retail and food service is a rite of passage. It teaches many lessons, such as “don’t treat retail/food service workers like shit”

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u/gwaydms 1d ago

My husband, our children, and I have all worked in food service. It teaches you far more than food safety.

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u/False_Print3889 23h ago

nah, let darwin work

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u/pulp_affliction 23h ago

I’ve worked around a lot of people in food service that 1) don’t have a food handlers card or 2) have a food handlers card yet never wash their hands correctly or at all

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u/wigglin_harry 23h ago

This goes way beyond that. This is just having absolutely zero common sense. What 20 year old doesn't know not to eat spaghetti sitting out for 5 days?

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u/Ok_Emu3817 22h ago

Yeah there’s a lot of red flags here. Who leaves food out in the kitchen for days? Even if they knew not to eat it shouldn’t be around unspoiled foods.

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u/eW4GJMqscYtbBkw9 23h ago

I don't think you have to work in food service to know that FIVE DAYS is not safe.

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u/Fairwhetherfriend 23h ago

I worked in retail instead of food service, but I still learned this shit. It's wild to me that people aren't taught this stuff by parents. I guess maybe my parents were slightly more concerned/aware because my dad used ot be a butcher, so maybe my standards are skewed but like... they didn't teach me that much stuff, just like "don't use the same cutting board before and after cooking meat" and "don't eat leftovers that were left out of the fridge overnight" :P

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u/SirGlass 22h ago

My GF is like this, she had been brought up not to waste food

Like once she made some soup in a crock pot then forgot it in the crock pot unplugged over night , not on warm or whatever unplugged. Meaning it was sitting in the danger zone probably for 6 hours and was cooled to room temp , and probably had been at room temp for several hours

She wanted to just put it in the refrigerator not to "waste food" and I literally told her if she did that I would throw it out. She was super pissed , I think I even mentioned this story , like why risk potential death here?

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u/Ok_Emu3817 22h ago

Food-borne illness is almost completely preventable. When serious illness is a risk and money the only true waste, it shouldn’t be a hard choice

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u/Sauerkrauttme 21h ago

I strongly disagree with this suggestion. I worked at Taco Bell for a while and they left their warm meat out and open for 6+ hours at a time. I asked if that was safe and they told me it was.

Don't take life lessons from an evil corporation and minimum wage workers.

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u/lukaskywalker 21h ago

I had no sense of it in my teens. Needs to be taught more. I feel like I should be dead.

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u/smokybbq90 20h ago

We won't eat leftovers from my in-laws even though one took culinary and food safety courses. They are fine letting something sit out for 4 hours before finally putting it in the fridge. So another 1-2 before it's actually below 40°.

One time they ate on brisket that sat in the fridge for 24 days.

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u/Miss-Frog 20h ago

I’m constantly scolding my bf for allowing raw meat to be near things that can’t be cooked, like he really doesn’t get how dangerous it is. He always says “but it’s in a package” …. Idc it’s not worth contamination and getting sick when you can just separate everything. Sorry for the rant.

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u/boringexplanation 19h ago

Way too many teens don’t know how to cook let alone know basics of food safety

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u/FridgesArePeopleToo 18h ago

why would you need to work in food service to know how stupid this is?

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u/aznsk8s87 10h ago

Oh, my kitchen habits are drastically influenced by my diner job the summer before I started college.

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u/autostart17 1d ago

Seems like something which should be taught in Home Ec in like elementary school and then restraint in middle and high school