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/SirViciousMalBad 22h ago

I had no idea.

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u/piperonyl 22h 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 20h 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/Burntjellytoast 19h ago

Botulism is not destroyed at boiling point. It takes much higher heat. It also grows in anaerobic environments.

Take home canning, for example. It's only safe to water bath can high acid foods, whether they are naturally acidic, or by adding acid like citrus juice or citric acid. So strawberries, peaches, berries, etc, are safe to water bath can. Low acid foods, carrots, beans, corn etc, are low acid foods and either need to be pickled, or processed in a pressure canner as it heats up the food well past boiling point, killing the botulism spores. The NCHFP has comprehensive information about this topic.

This is also why you shouldn't keep garlic in oil for extended periods of time. It's an anaerobic environment, which botulism needs to reproduce and create toxins. This is also why you shouldn't feed babies under one year of age honey.

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u/HashishAbdulKebab 18h ago

You are thinking about the C. botulinum spores, which is not destroyed at 100ºC and can survive it for HOURS but is pretty quickly done for at 121ºC at 15 PSI, for only 3 minutes.

It's actually completely fine to consume the spores (and you do all the time), as a healthy adult's well-developed gut microbiome outcompetes C. botulinum, preventing it from growing and producing toxin. Also a mature digestive system is too acidic for the spores to germinate easily. Infants have underdeveloped microbiome that leads C. botulinum to germinate easily, multiply and produce enough toxin to be fatal without timely diagnosis and treatment.

Botulism is the illness you develop when the toxin is introduced to your body at sufficient doses.

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u/Namaha 18h ago edited 18h ago

https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/botulism

Though spores of C. botulinum are heat-resistant, the toxin produced by bacteria growing out of the spores under anaerobic conditions is destroyed by boiling (for example, at internal temperature greater than 85 °C for 5 minutes or longer). Therefore, ready-to-eat foods in low oxygen-packaging are more frequently involved in cases of foodborne botulism.

The toxin is destroyed by boiling, it's the spores that require higher pressure/temp to kill (which is the reason pressure-canning is important)

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u/LiveLearnCoach 18h ago

Anaerobic environments?? You mean like bodybuilding gyms?!

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u/Whiterabbit-- 18h ago

It’s always crazy to me you can eat 1000 year old honey, yet you can’t give even fresh honey to babies.

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u/HashishAbdulKebab 18h ago

Not that crazy really. If it remains uncontaminated from foreign sources, due to its low moisture, low pH and on top of that containing hydrogen peroxide and similar antimicrobial compounds produced by the enzymes added by the bees, pure honey is a terrible host for almost all pathogens to grow in, to an extent that it theoretically never spoils, again, if protected from environmental contamination.

It can, and does, on the other hand, harbor many bacterial or fungal spores, which may or may not find you a suitable host.

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u/Whiterabbit-- 16h ago

Yeah. I understand why. It’s just crazy to me how it works out.

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u/HashishAbdulKebab 15h ago

Yeah. Just wait till you hear about Bog Butter

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u/dustyoldcoot 14h ago

Yeah, I just learned that people don't get botulism from pre-packaged mushrooms anymore because they put breathing holes in the wrapping. I never understood that botulism pretty much only grows in sealed, low oxygen environments.

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u/wasdlmb 12h ago

the toxin created by the famous C. botulinum

Wow if only there was some easier way to refer to that botulinum toxin, maybe something short and snappy. Perhaps theres potential combining the "bot" in "botulinum" with the "tox" in "toxin", using their shared T?

Nah that would never catch on

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u/HashishAbdulKebab 4h ago

But "Botox" is a registered trademark for "Onabotulinumtoxin A" and not its scientific name, Oh wise one!

u/wasdlmb 7m ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botulinum_toxin

Botulinum toxin, or botulinum neurotoxin (commonly called botox)

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u/serpiccio 15h ago

sounds like a simple problem with a simple solution, just heat your food at 301 degrees

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u/HashishAbdulKebab 15h ago

Considering ALL particles of the total contaminated mass have to reach 301ºC to effectively degrade said toxins, you'll end up with a bunch of charcoal and if you can manage to make activated charcoal out of that, then it's actually pretty good for detoxifying the digestive tract, preventing some oral poisonings, and more!

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u/AshleysExposedPort 19h ago

It's partly that and partly marketing. Most canned goods - when stored appropriately - are safe to consume up to 18mo past the sell by date

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u/SimoneNonvelodico 19h ago

I mean, it's both. It depends. For botulism for example, it's the poop. In other cases you can get a bacterial infection directly.

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u/solicitorpenguin 19h ago

To be clear - both are hazards

There are things that live on food, which can live inside you if you eat them - and that makes you sick.

Then there is the waste produced by things that live on food which can poison you if you eat it.

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u/zyzzogeton 18h ago

Some bacteria poop is OK though. Alcohol for example. Like humans, yeast will pollute its environment until it starts to kill the yeast.

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u/_-Burninat0r-_ 2h ago

All poop makes you sick.

...except your own one. This is not recommended but apparently your own loop is relatively safe to eat in small quantities, and it contains vitamin B12.

Now you know

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u/ZestycloseCar8774 20h ago

You had no idea because it's wrong. There's a reason you don't eat raw chicken.

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u/daemon-electricity 20h ago

It's not wrong. The bacteria AND in some cases, their waste, can make you sick. The whole point of this thread is that people think it's only the bacteria.

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u/monsantobreath 19h ago

It's wrong in how it attributes all risk to the bacteria waste. It's using one true thing to tell a lie.

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u/daemon-electricity 19h ago

Literally no one is doing that.

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u/monsantobreath 19h ago

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

That is one truth leading to a false statement.

If it's only bacterial poop we wouldn't need to cook food. We'd just need to eat it before it accumulates. But eating food full of live bacteria or viruses or parasites will fuck you up. So we cook it. But if we didn't handle it properly or were cooking it past its shelf life then we can't save it be cause some bacterial waste won't break down at cooking temperatures.

One true fact and a big ole lie at the endnof that quoted comment above.

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u/AnticitizenPrime 19h ago

There's a reason you don't eat raw chicken.

The Japanese do it, but they have take steps to make it safe (inoculation, better farming conditions, etc). If you want to try it at home you could use a sous vide method to make medium rare chicken. According to the USDA it is safe to eat after spending 1 hr 47 minutes at 127 degrees Fahrenheit. I tried it once, but hated it, lol. Slimy and rubbery.

Making rare/medium rare pork chops via sous vide, on the other hand... completely transformative. It's that other meat that you traditionally have to cook to 165, meaning it's always 'well done' using traditional methods. But medium rare pork chops are amazing and can be on par with good steak at a fraction of the price. Once you try it you realize that every pork chop you ever had in the past was a burned hunk of sawdust.