Title says it all.
My 5-year-old daughter has just eaten half a bowl of cereals with milk that we had left on the table this morning (12 hours ago).
I’m really worried about it. Should I be?
How long ago did she eat it?
I would call her pediatrician’s office and ask the nurse, but if it was bad she would probably be throwing up by now…
Leaving milk out for 12 hours is not going to cause it to grow Ebola. She’s probably fine. Worst case, she throws up later today, which is unpleasant but not a huge deal in the grand scheme of things.
I’m more curious how a bowl of milk got left out for 12 hours. Did nobody clean up after breakfast!?
If it was bad it would have tasted bad and she wouldn’t have eaten it.
I’ve left milk out for over 24 hours and it was still consumable.
If the milk wasn’t already on the verge of spoiling in the next microsecond it’s fine.
Did she go “Eww, this tastes gross”? Because that’s about the worst thing you can get from that situation.
People have been eating spoiled milk since the beginning of domestic animals. It’s usually referred to as yogurt or cheese or kefir.
There is nothing poisonous about “spoiled” milk, it’s just usually too sour for most people’s taste, but let it age beyond that and you’ve got yourself cheese.
Or Listeriosis.
How common is listeriosis with pasteurized milk?
She ate it 1h ago and is fine but it’s still way too early. I think that in some cases, symptoms only start after 3-4 days.
It was pasturized milk that had been refrigerated since I opened it two days ago. The chocolate cereals were first opened this morning.
As to how it happened: she filled the bowl herself (I poured the milk) at breakfast but didn’t finish it. I know I should have cleaned the table afterwards but mornings with two daughters can be a bit hectic.
Thanks for the answers so far, keep them coming, please.
And she didn’t say anything about the taste.
In some cases of what? Is there a particular condition you have in mind?
I wouldn’t sweat it unless she starts to feel bad. You’d be surprised what all nasty stuff kids can eat that won’t hurt them in the least bit.
What do you think people did before refrigerators? And pasteurization? Of course she’ll be fine.
When my wife lived with a French family for a year, she was at first put off by the fact that they never refrigerated butter or eggs, but she got used to it. Also left over meat, although it was eaten the next day.
Rare. But there is a non-zero number of cases each year. Pasteurized milk is relatively bacteria free, but much less so when it has been sitting out all day.
Doesn’t gastroenteritits take a few days to develop, depending on bacteria type and amount ingested?
Are you the OP’s mother?
If I am, somebody gave me a sex change and a mind wipe.
I’m not saying that I clean every dish in my house the instant it ceases being used, but they either go in the dishwasher or the sink after every meal, and that’s what’s happened in the houses I grew up in. It’s wildly outside my experience to leave a bowl of cereal on a table for 12 hours. (Well, aside from that one college roommate that I think never cleaned anything in the house the entire time I lived there)
There are more things in heaven and earth, yellowjacketcoder, than are dreamt of in your philosophy…
That one day in the life of a five year old child, her bowl of cereal happened not to go into the dishwasher or the sink immediately after breakfast is not at all shocking to me, or damning of her household. It’s wildly inside my experience. So there.