So leaving something out for 12 hours is about the same as leaving in the fridge for four days, rotting-wise. Not a big deal for most things, though getting on for meats and such-like.
On the other hand, 24 hours in a container exposed to sunlight so that it heats up to 40 degrees is like more than two weeks in the fridge.
Of course, this is very rought, and you probably get slightly different little beasties growing at 0 degrees vs 30, we’re assuming covered similarly in both cases, etc. etc.
OK, this is something that I have wanted to know for awhile, and Mange touched on it. I fI had some spoiled or moldy food and threw it in a fryer or maybe boiled it for an hour or in an oven for a day or ??? Would I still get sick (skip the taste part)?
What ‘toxins’ are left behind that heat doesn’t neutralize?
Well, I suppose that enough heat will neutralise pretty much any toxin (but you might end up chowing on powdered carbon, it is even possible that the prolonged cooking might break down the food to the extent that the results are carcinogenic/toxic/otherwise harmful); the bacteria aren’t capable of transmuting elements, so it isn’t as if the food suddenly contains cadmium or something.
But in the case of one of the variants of Bacillus Cereus (the cooked rice bug), it produces a toxin that is not necessarily destroyed by the the usual method of ‘reheating until piping hot throughout’.
Toxins, in this case, are proteins secreted by bacteria. You can denature them with enough heat, but a lot of the ones that make you sick will survive normal cooking.
Regardless of personal stories of what people may / may not have eaten that was left out, there is a reason why food handling and safety laws exist. I am sure that some people are more susceptible than others, but all it takes is one bad batch and anyone can get very ill. I am not a freak about cleanliness, but I am quite careful about food preparation and cross contamination. I have had bad food poisoning once, and that was enough to convince me that food preparation and storage is important.
Children can be more susceptible, so even if you can eat it, I wouldn’t necessarily share it with others.
I once got a late night Sicilian slice of pizza from a pizzeria that didn’t have a lot of business that day. And so, I’m pretty sure the slice was from a Sicilian pie made much earlier in the day and left on the warming counter for hours and hours.
Starting about three hours later, I spent the next day puking my guts out. Obviously food poisoning.
Personal story - adds nothing meaningful to discussion.
Had food poisoning twice in my life. Three times, I was hungry like the wolf, grabbed my food, and went to bolt it like a junkyard dog. In each of these three cases, I hadn’t even bitten into the food before I realized it was bad, and spat it out (once in a fairly nice restaurant, and I am not the type to spit, ever.) Twice, I got food poisoning. It wasn’t too bad, but I did call the health department and make a report, just to keep the statistics accurate.
And, despite learning this lesson, I still push the envelope. At least according to some.
When I was in Thailand I was a little unnerved to see some guys (university professors no less) who were making their own fermented rice-type drink. They took a little cooler of cooked rice, probably covered it with something to keep the bugs out, and just left it out for a week or three… in an area with an average temp of 30C (86F) and very high humidity. They were scraping the half-liquid/half-rice out with a glass and having a jolly old time getting high, and were teaching class the next morning no problem (then again this was a fairly regular pastime).
Made me feel not that bad leaving a pot of rice on the stove overnight and putting it the fridge the next day in cold arid Alberta. And I’ve found that rice reheats better than anything else I microwave (someone said it reheats bad).
About the immunity thing, look up some of the threads on drinking “raw” water. I couldn’t beleive how many people were swearing by the practice of intentionally drinking bad water in order to develop the microbial gut fauna needed to handle it (then again I think more than one is too many though:p). That is where I draw the line though - I’m not gonna purposely infest myself with parasites and encourage them to live in me just to be able to drink creek water once every 10 years!!:eek: !!
Plenty of traditional and ancient foods are fermented, which is a nice way of saying intentionally spoiled. Cheese is rotted milk, wine and beer are rotted juice and grains. Especially in Asian cultures, there are a lot of foods whose preparation literally involves digging a hole in the ground and leaving it in there for months and months (kimchi and thousand year eggs are two examples). I read something once about how some stone age cultures would preserve a mammoth carcass by tying it to stones and throwing it in a pond. The local bacteria were such that it stayed edible for a few months (although it made the meat rather fizzy and probably gave it a seriously rank odor). Then again, life expectancy back then wasn’t very long ;).
The key here is that safe rotting is done by careful recipes which (knowingly or not) control exactly which microbes attack the ingredients. In other words, you’re taking a risk when you push the envelope, unless you know what you’re doing.
[/Homer]
And speaking of “fizzy” meat. Too tired to cook and fed up (literally) with the big pot of Philippine sinigang (sour tamarind) soup that hasn’t been inside my refrigerator in the days since it was made, I whipped up a sandwich last night. The packet of cheap pre-sliced lunchmeat beckoned to me from my refrigerator door. Made a fine sandwich too.
Its wear date was October … of last year.
This means it was the better part of a year old. Perfectly edible and not even an off-color belch this morning.
I’ve eat stuff all the time that’s old. Just yesterday I ate some 3-day old chicken that was sitting out in room temp. Yum. Pizza same thing, week old. I’ve used ground beef that must’ve been atleast two years old. Eat rice all the time that’s more than a day old at room temp.
Besides old food, I’ve eaten food that have fell on the floor, not cooked properly (rare steaks), all bunch of stuff.
Sure, you can get sick, but we humans are pretty tough. I can’t afford to eat fresh food all the time, so I make do.
