The key point here being that food poisoning is caused by pathogens, not by the relatively harmless “spoilage bacteria” that cause food to develop spoilage odors. Food that has been mishandled may have both types of bacteria, but under some conditions may have only the pathogens. The point I was getting at before is that this is more likely if food is stored for a relatively short time in a too-warm “danger zone” (like room temperature or close to it) than it is over a longer period of proper refrigeration.
Yep. For some reason though, the SDMB often seems reluctant to accept this.
Very few aerobic pathogens are likely to be “dangerous” to a healthy host, although our modern obsession with super-cleanliness and adherence to rigid food-handling standards has probably left us with generally more naive and frail host defenses than much of the developing world. ('Course, more of us survive as well, but that’s another story…) And there’s always the odd individual–or baby/granpa–who succumbs to a pathogen that the rest of us (filthier) polloi have less trouble handling with only minimal and temporary discomfort. E Coli O157:H7 and all that…
A handful of common pathogens may make an otherwise healthy person temporarily sick with nausea and vomiting, and/or diarrhea, should they be allowed to multiply to the point where the toxins they make are in large enough quantity to produce clinical symptoms. Think Staphylococcal or Clostridium food poisoning for food kept too long at room temperature. However if the food is not contaminated with such organisms in the first place, they don’t arise de novo simply because food is not refrigerated. Odor is not a reliable way of detecting pathogens; it simply helps–and only, helps; it does not determine–decide total bacterial load.
Other pathogens make us ill if they are present in high enough loads to survive passing through the stomach into the intestinal tract where they can multiply and produce toxins inside the gut. Both the load of live pathogens ingested and circumstances related to eating (lotta food all at once, e.g.) help those organisms get to the intestine safely. Think Salmonella, Shigella, Campylobacter, Norovirus and so on. Again, lack of refrigeration does not generate those pathogens, and refrigeration only slows down reproduction to various extents depending on each pathogen.
If you want to be as safe as possible, throw it all out and buy new. If you want to save money, eat anything you want and see if it makes you sick. I would be very surprised if anything in your refrigerator, left for any amount of time in an atmosphere with oxygen, became lethal.
But I wouldn’t pay your life insurance benefit, or anything.
In actual fact, people very, very rarely get food poisoning. Only 400 Americans per million require hospitalization for food poisoning, and ten per million die. Many more people experience what is classified as food poisoning, but the numbers are clearly exaggerated, when you consider how many people exhibit symptoms of food poisoning (e.g., vomiting) just by smelling, looking at or thinking about spoiled or unattractive food.
Furthermore, it is not known how many of those people got food poisoning from the actual food itself, or how many got it from improper handling of food that that would have otherwise been safe to eat. Nor it is clear how many were poisoned by food that had spoiled in their homes, or how many by food that the consumer had no control over and already contained pathogens before acquisition, which would apply to all restaurant- or pot-luck-borne cases of food poisoning.
Statistically, the number of Americans who suffer symptoms requiring medical attention from eating food that spoils in their own home is very close to zero, Largely due to the fact that most people are unwilling to eat food that smells spoiled, hence the efficacy of the sniff test.
Again, the problem with the “sniff test” is that it’s testing for the wrong thing. The fact that it works at all is only because spoilage and pathogenic contamination are often coincident, but sometimes they’re not, and that can notably occur under common conditions such as inadequate refrigeration. Bottom line: the sniff test is not reliable, and suggesting that smell be used to determine whether a suspect food is safe to eat is very bad and dangerous advice – see previous links.
What IS reliable? Going outdoors on a bright sunny day is not a reliable guarantee that you won’t be struck by lightning, but like the sniff test, significantly improves your chances. You can reduce your risk, but not to zero, and even discarding all the contents of your fridge every 24 hours will not reduce the risk to zero.
The question is, to what extent are you willing to militate against your lifestyle in order to reduce your risk from .00008 to .00007. The OP asked me my opinion, which is different from yours, known to be more conservative, and maybe from the OPs, which is unknown.
One can be quite miserable without being admitted to the hospital or dying. I am not immunocompromised in any way, and had what was likely food poisoning a couple of years ago, and was literally shitting blood for the better part of a week and missed 2 - 3 days from work. I really don’t care to repeat that experience.
If you were shitting blood, you should have gone to the hospital. That you didn’t doesn’t mean you shouldn’t’ve.
I feel the same way as you do, Eva Luna. I’m very easily put off by any food that even hints of smelling a bit off and wouldn’t eat it, nor do I ever buy anything questionable, yet about a year ago I was so sick with what was obviously food poisoning that I was almost on the verge of fainting and was pretty much ready to call for an ambulance, but fortunately after a few hours it started to subside. My suspicion rests with some peppers that I extracted from a salad that had been sitting in the fridge for close to a week, and threw on a pizza which was otherwise all fresh ingredients that I’ve had many times before. And they certainly passed the “sniff test”, and so did everything else. I don’t buy this idea that food poisoning incidents are all that rare, though most of them are relatively mild. According to the USDA, one in six Americans gets sick from food poisoning every year. The evidence isn’t in the anecdotes, but in these kinds of statistics, and the links I provided.
Funny that we’re having this conversation as I just got back from a bit of grocery shopping, and rummaging through the fridge as I was putting things away, I came across some butter chicken that was 3 days past its “best by” date, ditto some vegetable rice and a grilled chicken and pepper salad. They all went straight into the garbage. So did some yogurt and berry fruit cups which I believe have greater tolerance beyond “best by” dates, but they were even older. The USDA/FDA do say that in many cases the “best by” dates are the points beyond which quality deteriorates and it’s not necessarily unsafe to consume these foods, but it depends on the food. Eggs I believe are an example where you can (and I do) feel comfortable using them well beyond the BB date.
My apologies for what was something of a hijack, and I have no specific advice or expertise to tell you which of your items are safe or not, but I wanted to get across the idea that I have learned to take no chances, and that the advice to trust the “sniff test” is really bad advice – especially when dealing with foods that have been left at room temperature for longer than is deemed safe. The problem is that under those conditions you could have dangerous pathogens and toxins rapidly develop before the food actually has a chance to start noticeably spoiling.
Yeah, let’s throw away everything without thinking about it, that’ll work.
My idea: Buy bag of salad, make a Greek salad.
I believe it was on this very message board that l learned for real that the “smell test” is absolutely not a reliable way to gauge food safety.
I am an adventurous eater with the proverbial cast-iron stomach and have travelled a lot and am not terribly carefull about what l eat or drink. Now that l think about it, l have only had food poisoning twice. Once in Egypt where l ate a large home-cooked meal on one of my first days there. I got dysentary and was very ill for days. The other occasion was after eating a bunch of fresh salsa from a health food store. In neither case did the food look or smell strange or off.
My doctor just told me to come to the office. I wasn’t dehydrated, or I would have done something more drastic. A few doses of Cipro and I was good as new.
Exactly. The contexts in which the ‘sniff test’ is most commonly prescribed, are very often the contexts in which it is least reliable.