Is there anything inherently wrong with eating food that’s been in the fridge for a long while?
I’m single and sometimes food tends to pile up in the fridge, especially leftovers. Or things like spaghetti sauce gets opened and stored for way long, eggs go a month or so past their expiration date, butter sits forever in the “dairy” container, etc.
I don’t eat anything that smells bad or has any visible mold, but today for example I just finished off some potato casserole and creamed corn that was made on Dec. 23. I had it with some non-moldy but stale bread that tasted just fine after being toasted.
I’ve been “scrounging” like this for a while now, ever since I got my own place and so far I haven’t died. But today the stuff I ate was a little older than I’m used to and it got me to thinking.
Is mold/off color/off smell the best or only indicator of food gone “bad”? Is there anything that could kill me that I wouldn’t notice right away?
I have a professor here who will happily eat eggs that have been a year in the fridge, provided they aren’t green/fizzing. Personally, I never look at the expiration on my eggs. They will get smaller on the inside, as they lose moister. But they should be fine. Especially if you cook them.
As for the other stuff:
There are some bad pathogens that can build up in refrigerated food. Listeria is the main one I’m thinking of. To my knowledge, the level of listeria in the food doesn’t have to be visible to the naked eye for it to be problematic. However, you’d have to eat the food without bringing it back up to bacteria killing temperatures for listeria to have an effect.
Also, many bacteria and molds make toxic compounds that they excrete in a sphere around themselves. So, those fuzzy bits you cut off the cheddar might not have removed all the bad stuff.
On the whole, off color, bad smells, and strange texture are good markers, but they won’t keep you safe all the time. I’m sure one of the microbe buffs will be along with more info.
Not especially in the shorter term - high risk foods (non-acidic, moist, protein-rich items) can quite easily develop dangerous population levels of the pathogens that cause food poisoning, without looking or smelling particularly bad.
However, the bacteria that cause food to rot and stink do generally have the same requirements as the dangerous food poisoning kinds, so in the longer term, I suppose it’s a fair assumption that stinky rotten food might not be safe to eat. It just doesn’t necessarily work the other way.
I was once out with a group of people from work and one of the women won $1,000 in a lucky dip at the club we were drinking at. They paid her in cash and everyone in the place was aware of it. She went to leave early and the thought crossed my mind, “what if some rough dude follows her and robs her?” Having had the thought I would have felt a real dick if she left and was robbed, so against her assurances I walked her to her car. Of course nothing happened.
I follow the same principle with food leftovers. Once I have seriously thought, “is this too old to eat?” I would feel like an idiot if I then ate it and fell ill so I chuck it out.
I’ve had food poisoning. Twice. No food in my refrigerator is expensive enough such that the thrift of keeping a questionable item outweighs the risk of food poisoning.
If you routinely find yourself with large quantities of leftovers, learn which foods are good to freeze and reheat later rather than letting them stew in the refrigerator.
Both times I had food poisoning (Mc Donald’s in 1987 and a local Chineese place in 1998) there was no indication that the food was bad when I ate it. I felt queasy hours later, and the food made a return appearance. The second time I *wished * it would kill me I was so sick.
My in-laws were victims of a bad mother’s day buffet one year that downed roughly one hundred people. Some of them had to be hospitalized for dehydration, but no one died. No one had any clue that the food was bad when they ate it.
Another relative was a victim of the ChiChi’s hepatitis outbreak, which is something you could catch unknowingly from food that could kill you, but that’s stretching it a bit.
It depends on the food. Moldy cheese is generally fine as long as you trim the mold and a little extra off. Stale bread is fine as long as it’s not moldy. Anything with tons of sugar, like jams + jellies should be ok as long as they’re not moldy or discolored. Sugar is a very good preservative. Same goes for salt and/or vinegar (pickles, relish, bbq sauce, etc.)
Anything made with mayo, eggs, dairy - toss it if it’s more than a few days old. These are rich food sources for bacteria.
There was a Dateline show a few years back in which bacteria counts were determined for refrigerated cooked food. I was surprised that even plain cooked refrigerated pasta and rice had dramatic increases in the number of bacteria after just a few days, enough to make you sick.
I used to eat refrigerated cooked food that had been stored up to a week or ten days. I also occasionally got an upset stomach that I previously attributed to illness but was likely due to mild food poisoning.
I now follow a strict rule. Any refrigerated cooked food not eaten with 72 hours gets pitched. Since following this rule, I can’t even remember the last time I got an upset stomach.
Here is a website with some guidelines on how long food can be safely stored in the refrigerator:
Reading the chart, the USDA recommends no more than 3-4 days for most cooked food, which corresponds well to my personal rule.
I’ve gotten severe food poisoning in the past. To me, the risk of food poisoning is simply not worth the cost of tossing some 4-day old leftovers.
Thanks for all the info, folks. I’m kind of bummed that I have to stop playing the “How Long is Too Long?” game but if food poisoning is as bad as everyone says it is, I guess I’ll start being more mindful of what I eat and when.
For the record, I have not had any fallout from yesterday’s Very Old Meal. I’ll consider myself lucky.
Yes, it seems counter intuitive, but it’s true. Bacteria use sugar as an energy source, but in high concentrations it kills them by dehydration. The water inside the cell difuses out to try to equalize the osmotic pressure (in other words, to try to make the concentration the same on both sides of the membrane).
All my leftovers go into the freezer in meal sized chunks. Means I don’t have to worry about food poisoning, and yesterdays lunch is just a microwave away.