The online article lists mushrooms, chicken, potatoes, celery. In short, pretty much what I put in my stew.
What online article? Link?
What article? What do you mean by “cold”? - Raw food? Previously cooked food? Food held at what temperature? For how long? Etc, etc.
Previously cooked and then put in the ref. I usually cook a week’s meal on Sundays.
Sorry, heathyfoodhouse.com
risk can’t be that bad, if any, because who doesn’t.
As usual so helpful.
assuming you mean healthyfoodhouse.com, that site is loaded with woo. this article alone is loaded with bullshit.
Sorry, so no credence on the claim of proteins transforming?
The bugs that live and thrive in the cold will make it go mouldy - covered in blues and greys…
It is the food that is kept warm for a while … hours … without cycling through “hot” to kill the bugs, that is a problem, and suprisingly this can include fruit salad ! A cafe or bakery or bistro must keep the food at a high enough temperature that the bugs are killed…
The assumptions are that any WARM and WET food that was living (made of cells) but is now cooked is now just wonderful food and environment (temperature for example) for bacteria…
Some foods are preserved with additives like sugar, salt, drying out but you will know them as foods that don’t need to be refridgerators. (refrigerating something that doesn’t need refrigeration doesn’t usually ruin it.)
Here is what seems to be the original article:
These Foods Must Not Be Re-Heated! You Might Get Poisoned!
Sample text for comment and criticism:
They don’t list any sources, references, or scientific bases for their conclusions. In the case of spinach, beets, and celery, they claim that when you reheat them, the nitrates will change to nitrites, but apparently they do not have any such concern when you originally heat them.
They also claim that eggs become toxic when you reheat them (but apparently not when you originally heat them), but “sauces such as béchamel” apparently bestow immunity to toxicity.
You might want to browse their home page which currently also includes articles explaining how lemons do magic for your body and combining them with warm water increases their power and how three natural juices will treat your arthritis and joint pains. One of the juices is potato juice, but I sure hope they don’t have to heat the potatoes to make the juice (see first article).
Edit: And jz78817 beat me to the punchline.
I found the article you were talking about.
Mushrooms
I poked around online, and I think I found where this comes from. In the olden days, before refrigeration, you were warned not to keep and re-heat cooked mushrooms as they would spoil.
These days, with refrigeration, there’s no problem.
I reheat mushrooms on pizza all the time and have never had a problem.
Chicken
This one made me laugh. I didn’t bother to do any research on this. If there were any truth to it, I’d be dead by now.
Potatoes
Again, I didn’t bother to research this, because I have eaten a lot of reheated potatoes with no ill effects whatsoever.
Spinach
This one is commonly believed in Europe, especially in Holland, apparently. In countries where folks aren’t aware that you shouldn’t reheat spinach, people reheat spinach all the time and suffer no ill effects from it.
There may be some minor truth to this. Apparently if you reheat spinach repeatedly, this causes the formation of nitrates, which should be avoided by infants under the age of 6 months. For anyone older than that, it’s no biggie. Other sites say that reheating has very little effect on nitrates. So maybe nothing here after all.
Beets
I don’t eat beets, so after poking around online I found a few references to nitrates, as with spinach, but I also found lots of people reheating their beets and apparently suffering no ill effects from them.
Again, maybe an issue for infants, but not for anyone else.
Celery (and carrots)
Again, I have reheated soups numerous times containing these vegetables. According to this article, I should be dead by now.
Eggs
Eggs go bad fairly quickly. I got sick once on deviled eggs that had been left out too long. If the egg was left out for a long time before being put into the fridge, reheating it may be a very bad idea. If it was refrigerated shortly after cooking though, it shouldn’t be a problem.
Reheating a hard boiled egg is no biggie. Folks do that all the time.
Reheating a soft boiled egg in the microwave can make it explode. It’s not really a health issue because at that point you probably aren’t going to eat it, but it is a heck of a mess to clean up.
That whole site is just silly.
what claim? if you want us to respond to it, tell us where it is.
The statement “there is a change in the composition of protein” is completely vague and meaningless. What does it mean for a protein to “change composition” or “transform” when reheated? Why would a “changed composition” be bad? As an occasional biochemist I have no fucking clue what they’re going on about. I’m even more certain that they don’t have any clue either.
It’s even less sensible than talking about “alkaline lemons”. That’s at least a factually wrong statement. “there is a change” is so meaningless that it is not even wrong.
Proteins ‘transform’ when you heat them up the first time, assuming you heat them up enough to cook the food. It’s called denaturing the proteins: Normally, proteins are long chains of chemicals called amino acids which are all curled and folded in on themselves in very complex shapes. When they’re cooked, they unfold, and become just long chains of amino acids, in no particular shape. That’s called ‘denaturing’ the protein, and it’s why egg whites go from clear to opaque white when an egg gets fried.
The point is, reheating isn’t when proteins get denatured. By the time you reheat something, the proteins are all already denatured, because that happened when it was cooked the first time.
(Side note, because this confused me for a while: Denatured alcohol is alcohol mixed with a toxic substance that makes people vomit and, hopefully, tastes bad enough they don’t drink a lot of it in the first place. It’s not even slightly related to denaturing proteins.)
The ultimate note is the website you read is dumb and is spewing nonsense which is either so vague it’s meaningless or completely wrong. It’s impossible to know if they’re even talking about denaturing because it’s likely they don’t even know what they’re talking about.
It’s also possible to denature proteins without heating them, such as in the ceviche I had this evening.
Puncture the yolk first.
The article is utter fucking bullshit and not even consistent with itself. It claims that potatoes can be toxic if reheated, but the link goes to another page about green potatoes being toxic, not reheated potatoes.
The article isn’t talking about pathogenic spoiling of incorrectly chilled or stored food - it’s claiming that certain foods turn to poison when reheated. Bullshit. My cite is the many varieties of canned soup.