Is my wife going to kill me? (food poisoning)

Factual Questions
1

My whole life (well, those parts I recall), I’ve been preached at by family, friends, home-economics teachers (hey, it was required!), and government pamphlets that you need to refrigerate cooked food as soon as possible. For example, that left-over Thanksgiving stuffing is likely to kill you if you don’t take it out of the turkey and refrigerate it pronto.

Anyway, this has been drummed (and drummed and drummed) into me. Now, my beautiful new bride has this habit of intentionally leaving things out overnight so as not to put anything into the refrigerator hot (and not being in California, at the current time we don’t care about the cost of refrigeration). Usually it’s just boiled pinto beans, not from a can, but originally dry. They haven’t gotten me sick, but I can only say “yet.” What are the prospects of getting that way?

Yesterday morning, however, I started making the coffee and found a pot of meatballs that she had boiled. They’d been sitting there all night. I didn’t want to throw them out (she worked hard on them), so I turned on the heat to boil them again in hopes of killing anything swimming with the meatballs.

TODAY, I ate the same meatballs for lunch. They were quite tasty, and it’s been about seven hours now, and I don’t feel sick. Will I remain that way?

Just how serious should I worry? She’s lived her whole life treating food like this, and she’s fine – or has she just been lucky?

Thanks!

2

Can you take my word for it, or do I need to give you a FDA-CFSAN cite?

She’s been lucky. She is wrong. You are correct. You should always refrigerate food overnight, especially protein-rich stuff like meatballs.

That business about “letting the food cool off so it won’t strain the refrigerator” is an Urban Legend left over from the 1920s, when they used iceboxes, and hot food put directly into an icebox really did make the ice melt faster. However, modern fridges don’t have any trouble handing that pot of hot stew, so tell Sweetie to put it away, not leave it on the counter overnight. There are lots of cites for this on the Web. Look up “food safety refrigeration” on Google, and brace yourself for the inundation. :smiley:

3

I don’t know if she’s trying to kill you (did she recently take out a large life insurance policy on you? :wink: ) but I wouldn’t leave stuff out overnight, and I certainly wouldn’t eat it.

I know that people used to leave stuff out till it cooled, back when the fridge was an icebox, with real ice to keep stuff cool, and putting a hot dish in there would melt the ice.

Now, though, an hour or so to cool off should be plenty. I always put stuff right from the pan into a plastic container (Tupperware-type) and put it right in the fridge. Today’s fridges are very efficient, so it shouldn’t matter.

4

Yes, she is trying to kill you. But not in this manner.

Boiling again only kills things that might be in there - it does not necessarily destroy the toxins they were producing all night long.

5

I’ll have to agree with the other posters that this is a potentially dangerous food-handling practice (I had to take a food safety as a part of my culinary school training). A moist, protein-based food product (such as the meatballs) should never be in the danger temperature zone of 41°- 141° for more than four hours. Within four hours, the bacteria levels and the toxin levels can cause serious illness.

Anthracite is right–boiling may kill off the bacteria, but not necessarily break down the toxins left by them.

Thing is, most adult immune systems can actually handle something left out for four hours and reheated, but children, elderly, and those with affected immune systems can become seriously ill (something to think about before inviting Great-Aunt Hazel over for dinner, or before you have little ones in your family).

6

I would like to point out something that may have escaped the attention of some of the advice givers: the theory of spontaneous generation has been proved false. Cooked food does not spontaneously generate bacteria after being left out a certain length of time.

The freshly cooked food in the container it was cooked in is sterile until it cools off and bacteria start falling in. It remains safe to eat until it is either colonized by bacteria that can cause disease if you eat them such as shigellae or salmonellae (from feces) or by toxin-producing bacteria such as staphylococci (from skin) or clostridia (from soil). So unless you have really a really nasty kitchen or people who poke their fingers into food that is sitting around, your food will remain safe for some time, probably overnight 99% of the time. Your wife’s good health is proof of that.

You can think of cooked food sitting around in the container it was cooked in as the equivalent of canned food in an open can; it really shouldn’t be left out of the refrigerator if you can avoid it but it’s not likely to make you sick if unless it has been contaminated.

The recommendation to refrigerate cooked food once it has cooled is certainly prudent in anyone’s kitchen, no matter how clean. (I suggest you compromise with your wife and refrigerate as soon as the container is cool enough to handle. It is truly important in a food service establishment where the kitchen may not be all that clean and where one slipup can sicken hundreds of people to be more meticulous than in a well kept home and that’s why there are strict rules and time and temperature limits enforced by county inspectors.

So in answer to your questions:

Just how serious should I worry?
– not a lot

She’s lived her whole life treating food like this, and she’s fine – or has she just been lucky?

– mostly clean, just a little lucky.

7

Yeah:

Some dangerous bacteria, such as Clostridium, can survive cooking as heat-resistant spores. Boiling isn’t really a good method of sterilization, which is why your doctor’s and dentist’s instruments are autoclaved.

Bacteria is present in the food you buy, so being super-clean won’t help you there. Not all bacteria are killed by cooking. Bacteria and other little critters are everywhere, even in the cleanest kitchen, and they are amazingly durable. They grow in your refrigerator (though at a slower rate than at room temperature) and in your freezer.

Given a choice between paying a couple extra dollars a year (or whatever) to promptly refrigerate food or running the risk of killing my family with botulism, I’ll pay the electric bill.

food borne illness

8

Thanks EVERYBODY for your prompt answers – it’s pretty much what I expected. But… I hate to doubt my wife at this stage in the relationship.

I’m still not feeling sick from the albondigas (the meatballs), but I’ll chalk that up under luck for the time being.

Although in every instance, the left-out food was exactly like Yeah described it – she cooks it covered, and doesn’t touch it at all until the next day. Maybe that’s why she’s been lucky so far – me too.

For the record, when I notice it’s out, I always put it in the fridge. And as I’ve said, electricity here in Michigan’s dirt cheap – I’m not worried about the fridge doing some overtime on hot stuff.

Thanks again, all!

9

“Bacteria is present in the food you buy, so being super-clean won’t help you there. Not all bacteria are killed by cooking. Bacteria and other little critters are everywhere, even in the cleanest kitchen, and they are amazingly durable. They grow in your refrigerator (though at a slower rate than at room temperature) and in your freezer.”

And all that is pretty much irrelevant. Sure there are bacteria in the food you buy. There are bacteria in your mouth and nose and in your intestine too. Sure not all bacteria are killed by cooking. Some bacteria live in hot water springs. So what. The only bacteria you need to worry about in the present context are those relatively few species that can make you sick when you eat them or produce a toxin that can make you sick. Most disease causing bacteria are pretty sensitive to heat (pasteurization does not even require heating to the boiling point). Yes, there are some hardy disease-causing bacteria, especially spore formers, but they are unusual. That’s why they are famous. In any case, clostridia won’t grow in food exposed to air. So Balthisar won’t get botulism from the meatballs.

10

That is utterly ridiculous. There isn’t a kitchen in the world that’s sterile enough to meet your 99% safe conditions. That’s because there is one massive source of contamination in every kitchen: humans. All they have to do is breathe over the food and the dish is sufficiently seeded with bacteria. If you don’t believe me, I have a dish of sterile potato salad I just made, every ingredient came either from a sealed unopened sterile jar, or was cooked to boiling point. I’ll leave it out overnight and you can eat all you want. But I’m not having any.

If the wifey has survived in “good health” that is because she’s been exposed to low-level food poisoning so many times that she’s developed some immunity to it, or perhaps she gets it anyway and thinks everyone gets “indigestion” once in a while after eating leftovers. Except it’s not indigestion, it’s food poisoning.

11

Botulism is an anaerobic bacteria, you can’t get botulism except from canned foods (or foods sealed similarly to canning, that is, sealed airtight without any oxygen). But he surely can get salmonella, and a host of other baterial poisonings from those meatballs.

12

Its not the bacteria that kill you… its their toxins… if they have been multiplying overnight and you KILL them by boiling them… you only release their toxins… you see, alive they cant hurt you, its only in death they they release their poisons. However you CAN take assurance that by raising everything to boiling point they will not Grow more colonies in your intestines… and that counts for a LOT.

13

And so relationship dance takes another spin. Rather than confront his bride over unsanitary food handling, the new husband simply feigns food poisoning and hopes she gets the message. Meanwhile, the new bride is off in MPSIMS with her own thread on faking orgasms.

14

“I hate to doubt my wife at this stage in the relationship.”

You can start doubting her when she starts denying you oral pleasure.

15

Actually you might be just as well be dead at that point, when that happens, eat as much left over night food as you can.

16

Serious food poisoning will kill or permanently maim you. Less serious food poisoning and you’ll just wish it would kill you!

Not all food poisoning is bacterial - there are some fascinating viral, amoeboid, flagellate and fungal types, but this is likely to be a long post just to cover some of the basics of bacterial food poisoning raised by previous posters.

Toxins:
Bacterial toxins can be heat-labile (destroyed by heat) or heat-stable (not destroyed by heat). Some of the more ingenious food poisoning bugs produce both! Bugs don’t have to be dead to liberate toxins. Some food poisoning bugs are infectious (ie you ingest a few bugs, they colonise you, multiply, and produce various toxins post infection). Others are intoxicating. They multiply in food and produce toxins which you ingest and become ill from without the bugs taking up residence in you at all.

Food types:
The need to cool food rapidly is not limited to protein foods. You can get cereal based food poisoning as well from ill-cooled food. You can also get dairy based, but I’m not aware of rapid cooling as a significant issue there.

Sporeformers:
Bacteria other than sporeformers can be destroyed by boiling. If the food is cooked for long and hot enough, all the non-sporeformers initially in the food will be killed. Some of the spores from the sporeformers will not. Leave the food at room temperature for a few hours in the right conditions and the sporeformers will generate.

You can pretty well divvy up the sporeformers into aerobic (Bacillus) and anaerobic (Clostridium). Not all food poisoning sporeformers require anaerobic conditions. It is theoretically possible for some strains of Clost to germinate under locally reducing (rather than strictly anaerobic) conditions, but it isn’t the most likely situation. What is a problem are the aerobic sporeformers, particularly Bacillus cereus. It can produce both heat-labile and heat-stable toxins, and has been implicated in outbreaks of food poisoning in a range of cereal-related products such as fried rice, meat pies and crumpets. (In fact, fried rice is how it was identified as a food poisoning organism. Chinese restaurants used to be closed on Mondays. Some would boil the rice last thing on Sunday/early Monday for Tuesday’s fried rice. It would be left to cool still covered, still in the cooking containers, on the bench. The spores would germinate, mulitply to a sufficient level to produce toxins, the heat stable toxins would survive the frying process and on Wednesdays there would be a bunch of people calling in sick.)

Where do the sporeformers come from? By and large, from the soil. Thus to the raw food, to the supermarket and to you. Spices and grains, unless treated, often have a high spore load.

Boiling:
Sure, boiling will knock off the nonsporeformers, and as long as the container in which the boiling was done is airtight, the food won’t have any nonsporeformers. My pots sure aren’t airtight, and I’m betting yours aren’t either unless you are doing home canning. So as the food cools down, air is drawn into the pot, and guess what comes with it? Yup, bacteria. Sporeformers and non sporeformers alike.

Cooling:
If the food is particularly dense, or the container particularly large, it can remain a nice comfy bug warm temperature in the middle of the food for a loooooong time. Lots of tme for bugs to multiply and produce toxins.

My advice: You don’t have to whisk the pot from the flame to the fridge. But as soon as it is just cool enough to pick up with your hands put it in the fridge. And throw leftovers out after 3 days in the fridge.

Frankly, once you’ve experienced rectal tenesmus (straining to evert the bowel - one of the symptoms of B. cereus food poisoning, and (oh joy!)it can be simultaneous with vomiting) you’ll have no sympathy with the thought that it’s important to avoid straining the fridge rather than you!

17

well, think about it this way, she is cooking for you right, if you don’t like it, do it yourself! theres nothing stopping you. Anyway i don’t see why your worried abou dying, think about what your breathing in, in the air, and what your drinking, i’m sure there are worse things to worry about than if your wife is trying to kill you through food poisoning, besides, you said your “New Bride” and murder comes later in the marriage, you should be safe for a while yet! and even if she is trying to kill you, she;d probably think of a more quicker, more gratifying way of doing it, rather than the slow food poisoning

18

All of the above precautions are taken to avoid risks which are in fact quite small and not overly serious except for the elderly, children and the physically weak. Good food hygiene is desirable and will lessen the amount of food poisoning, but much of the educational material is aimed at commercial outlets who are dealing with secondary safety issues- not the avoidance of food poisoning, but the avoidance of the chance of food poisoning leading to major litigation costs.

Before ice boxes were available, kitchens were relatively good at producing food without causing major outbreaks of food poisoning. It is probable that earlier generations built up greater resistance to certain bacteria and toxins that we have now lost.

Additionally, modern food production methods have increased the liklihood of certain bacterium- salmonella is far more common in intensively farmed chickens and eggs.

Most foods that have been raised to above about 160F and then covered and left at room temperature for 12 hours or so will have relatively little risk of picking up contamination that would lead to food poisoning (rice is an exception).

You are at much greater risk of getting food poisoning from cross contamination- uncooked foods dripping on to uncovered food or surfaces in the fridge; for instance, salads in the salad cooler and raw chicken on plates above it- that is a disaster waiting to happen.

When you look at actual kitchen practice and the incidence of food poisoning in the domestic setting, it is obvious that the official precautions are over written and not as necessary as they are made to seem. If their predictions of harm were so precise, there would be multiple daily admissions to hospitals with domestic food poisoning- this is not the case! IIRC most food poisoning resulting in hospitalization is due to mass catering.

Oh, and I am qualified to Senior (teaching) level in Food Hygiene, and when I teach, I teach what is required, not what is really the case. It is necessary to teach in such an open and shut manner to avoid corner cutting and litigation.

And BTW, research shows that (ten years after wooden chopping boards were thrown out as dangerous) that wooden boards, well cleaned and maintained, are safer than plastic boards, but the risk cannot be taken to reintroduce them.

19

Also, the issue isn’t just saving your fridge the strain: it is saving the cost of the food. On my budget (college poor) pizza is a pretty big luxury. If I order one and eat half and forget to put the rest inthe fridge, throwing out the other half 8 hours later causes a serious pang.

Now, I acknowledge that there is some risk involved in eating food that has been left out more than three days. But there is also the cost–the cost of the food, which in this house at least, is the second biggest item on our budget (after rent). The obvious answer is to be good about putting food away, but none of us are perfect and there is always the “Oh,I thought you were going to do that” factor. So keeping all that in mind, does the money saved by eating food left out overnight justify the risk? I tend to think it does, that for our circumstance at least the cost is (realitivly) great and the risk is (realitivly) low. Now, ten years from now when we are more comfortable, finacially, it may not be worth the risk. These things are all realitve.

20

I never ever refrigerate pizza when I’m drinking (most days, actually). Nothing beats a overnight pizza, heated for just a few seconds in the microwave.
I’m still alive, and I’ve done this lots of time with pasta too.
However, I am a vegitarian, and thus there are no meat products involved (otherwise I would definitely not do it). Surely it’s just paranoia to think you’ll catch something serious from some beens or pizza that are allowed to stay at gasp room temperature, for gasp 7-8 hours.

*Morrison keels over, clasping his chest

Actually, this thread sort of has me freaked out, tell me I’m gonna be ok?

— G. Raven