I wonder if this is an US/the rest thing or maybe a meat eater / vegetarian thing. For exact scientific evaluation, please tell in which groups you fit in when commenting.
When the topic is food here or also on former similar platforms there is always this guy saying “omg you can’t leave your food for 30 minutes on the counter because bacteria you know” and I don’t get where that sentiment comes from. Many people agree and say you will get food poisoning from that.
First of all, let me tell you I am not an idiot (at least I hope so) and I know how microbiology works - bacteria is everywhere. I don’t doubt your food on the counter will get populated by bacteria, probably more than it would be in the fridge. The question is, is this bad for you?
Now, where I live (central Europe) people are not so fast with that and I wonder why this is. We have a temperate climate which could play a role, so a large portion of the year the temperature is pretty moderate, compared to let’s say south US. But apart from that I don’t really know.
I am a vegetarian, mostly vegan. I am pretty sure it’s not a good idea to leave animal parts out of the fridge, as they are already populated with bad bacteria when you buy them. But for vegetables? Pasta, soup, lasagna? To be honest, I have no shame to leave that stuff on the counter the whole day and even take a spoon from time to time without reheating. Over night I put it of course in the fridge, and in summer when we have 35°C it’s also a different thing. But in general I don’t really care. I know I cannot extrapolate on humanity, only because ai never felt bad after doing this. But honestly, am I an idiot? Or are you just a bit sensitive? Do you assume everybody eats meats?
Really interested in your ideas. Don’t forget to tell the region you are coming from and your diet preferences.
Thank you so much my respected lemmings and pie people
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Canadian living in Australia. Omnivore.
Kicker: Food technologist and health inspector. AMA.
Tl;dr: Doesn’t matter if it’s meat or veg. It goes in the fridge. Follow 2h/4h rule. Edit: Should specify certain veg are potentially hazardous as soon as you cut in to them, like leafy greens. All cooked or partially veg that should be treated like meat.
For work, I’m fairly strict in businesses because the food can go anywhere once it’s in the hands on the customer, even in restaurants or at home. You can look at your dine in customers and they all look healthy, but what if they’re not, or where do the leftovers go? Do they take it home after date night to share some with little Bobby or Grandma Jane? In business, you do what you can to keep the food as “clean” as you can.
At home and in food businesses, handwashing is ALWAYS a problem. Food handlers are always touching their faces, phones, hip towel they’ve had on all day, touching a towel they use used to wipe their hands after only rinsing hands in water in the sink, and then touching lettuce for a salad. So even at home, you can cook things to keep bacteria, but is the scoop, container, and your hands clean? Dust, pollen, flies, hairs, etc also carry microbes, and if any of them fall in to food after its been cooked, the bacteria can grow.
It also depends on the type of bacteria, too. Salmonella can infect at an extremely low dose, and Staphylococcus infects at very high doses.
I follow the 2h/4h rule for anything potentially hazardous. Of course, at home, I’m a bit more flexible, usually +/- 1h. If I make myself sick, alright, but there’s no way I’m going to make anyone else sick, so if I’m making food for others, I keep to the strict rules. I’m also generally more risk adverse because the thought of anything involuntary coming out either end makes me sick just thinking about it.
I think the amount of time a food stays out is cultural, and if you grew up with it, your gut will have gotten used to the levels of bacteria. Us westerners generally get sick drinking tap water in certain countries when the locals are fine. I used to live with a Japanese lady for a year, and she knew what I did for a living. She always left rice out all night and ate it the next day. One day, she came to me with it and said “does this smell weird?” and it was a definite yes from me. I’d never leave cooked rice out that long and feel comfortable eating it.
So yeah, Bacillus cereus or whatever bacteria present may not occur all the time, but it does happen. Imagine making large batches and serving to large numbers of unrelated people.
Another thing: Cool foods within 2h to a reasonable temperature (I say 40C is fine) before putting it in the the fridge uncovered. If you put hot food in the fridge, you run the risk of warming up the foods already in the fridge.
Wash your hands.
And use a thermometer. Make sure it’s clean before you use it.
Thanks for listening to my Ted Talk.
I have a thermometer with a metal probe. What’s your view on how to correctly clean it?
At home, I just use soap, water and a scrubber. As an additional step, I also either wipe it down with an alcohol wipe if I have any laying around, or let it sit in freshly boiled water. I’m not crazy about doing this for everything except with undercooked or raw poultry.
At work, everyone is required by law to implement a sanitising step to ensure any residual harmful microbes are destroyed… but I’d never deter anyone at home from doing this ;) I suggest properly diluted bleach (100ppm, or as per label instructions, freshly made), or quaternary ammonium compound (“quat”, also diluted to either 200ppm or as per label). Otherwise, dishwasher.
What is this 2h/4h rule of which you speak?
Good question!
The 2h/4h rule (also seen written as 2/4h rule, 2-hour/4-hour rule, etc.) is used for two things: cooling potentially hazardous foods, and potentially hazardous foods left out of temperature control.
Cooling: Foods are to be cooled from 60C to 20C within two hours, and from 20C to 4C within the following four hours. Of course most foods are cooked above 60C, which is the range where pathogenic bacteria don’t grow. You want to get food from 60C to 4C within the certain time frame, otherwise it just gives bacteria some good conditions to grow well (food, no other microbes to compete with, etc.). The range of 4C-60C is called the “temperature danger zone.” Foods should stay out of here as much as they can.
Food left out of temperature control is something else that many people are less stringent about, but it is also really important (think summer time bbq season). Potentially hazardous foods can be in and out of the fridge for a cumulative total of two hours (example: you take out a food item and put it back in after 5 minutes, now it has 115 minutes left. Do it again tomorrow, it now has 110 minutes, etc.). After the two hour mark up to four hours, you eat it or throw it out. Once it hits four hours, throw it. Someone used milk as good example. Milk in the fridge door goes off far faster than on a shelf. Foods on the BBQ cooked at noon should be eaten or thrown out by 4PM.
There are lots of other little details and exceptions, but this is what applies in the majority of cases. ;)
I’ve always wondered why eggs can be unrefrigerated in some countries and be safe to eat for weeks…
This has to do with how the eggs are sanitized before they’re sold. In places where you need to keep them refrigerated, they’ve been washed in such a way that a protective layer has been removed. In countries that keep their eggs on the counter, this has not been done.
Yeah, that’s huge. Outbreaks are becoming more and more common. In Canada and USA, it’s a requirement to keep eggs in the fridge, and we just assume chickens = Salmonella, which is also why there is such stress on washing your hands thoroughly after handling raw chicken, cut chicken on a designated poultry-only cutting board, etc.
I think some countries will do a sanitising wash, some just wash with water.
In Australia, Salmonella infections have been increasing, so it’s strongly recommended to keep eggs refrigerated. It’s not written in to law, but we’re a little behind here on a few things. Also consider the differences in handling of eggs at a supermarket, at a farmer’s market, or someone selling excess eggs outside their home.
Another thing that needs to be considered: Egg shells are porous. In a supermarket, temperatures don’t fluctuate as much as it would at home or in a restaurant, so they’re not going to sweat (moisture = nice spot for bacteria to grow). In restaurants and at home, if they’re not in the fridge, eggs will be subject to sweating (think hot kitchen during the day, cool kitchen at night; flies, cockroaches, rodents, unclean human hands, etc.) I’ve seen eggs being sold out of eskies on the side of the road, and I avoid those. The Aussie sun is HOT.
40C
How many football fields is that?
Anecdotal evidence rules! Everyone posting here is alive!
The estimated 420,000 folks who die annually from improper food and water handling refuse to post!!!
Great stuff!…good? Shouldn’t we only take advice from those who survived their own food storage habits?
That’s an incredibly wide category. Any non-anecdotal data on how many of those deaths were people eating leftovers which they didn’t immediately refrigerate?
Mine’s anecdotal, but back in the '70s I worked with a guy who would eat the contents of an ashtray in bars, as a party trick!
When he died in his 50s, they never blamed the party trick!When he died in his 50s, they never blamed the party trick!
I mean, it wouldn’t make sense to blame the party trick if he was like … ran over by a car.
Okay, but if our standard of evidence is “person did x and died at some point later”, that would apply to every human doing absolutely anything.
Yes but counterpoint I once didn’t do something and I’m still alive.
I’m not, I’m dead. BTW I ate a carrot that had been on the counter for almost an hour.
Vegetarian/Germany. I’ll leave food on the counter too as long as I’m still planning to eat it the same day. Never had issues. If I’m planning to only eat it the next day, I’ll refrigerate it.
Meat eater from the UK. I’ll leave stuff out for varying amounts of time, just smell it before I eat it or have a trial spoon first.
Never had any food poisoning in my life and I have eaten some very questionable things for sure.
In my personal opinion people wildly over exaggerate stuff like this and dates on packaging. My nose knows.
This is a thing pushed by American media. It’s a Boomer-era panic over summertime picnics and somehow mayonnaise causing potato salad to immediately after 30 minutes outside a refrigerator to become fatal if consumed.
It’s also the product of misunderstandings of buying meat at a supermarket, wrongly assuming that meat that is not refrigerated for more than 15 minutes will basically kill you.
Panicking about food poisoning is a moral panic about “bad parenting” and blaming people when it wasn’t widely known what causes food poisoning: not washing your filthy hands, cross-contaimination, and poor hygiene overall.
I’ve lived in West Africa and bought and cooked and safely eaten meat that had sat on a wooden plank lightly covered in flies before I got there to buy it. I survived. Mayonnaise will outlive humanity before it molds or goes bad at room temp.
I’ve read so many horror stories about the American healthcare system that I always imagined it was out of fear of needing medical attention.
In Newfoundland (and I’m assuming other historically fish-based economies) it was really common before refrigeration existed to split your fish (open it like a book on a drying rack) and heavily salt it to store it long term. The drying process could take days with flies swarming around before getting moved to a shack. You’d then soak the fish before cooking to extract some of the salt. It’s no longer necessary but we still do it for the tradition. I’ve eaten it many, many times and never got sick from it, and I can guarantee it was more than 30 mins between the fish dying and it being salted. Especially these days with the codfish population dwindling, it could take a couple hours sometimes to catch all your fish. We kill the fish as soon as it enters the boat so the first fish of the day could be 3+ hours before being treated at all.
That being said, food safety is still important. I’ve seen some people say it’s fine to leave stuff out for a while if you’re cooking it after because it’ll kill the bacteria when you cook it, but that’s not entirely true. I had to take some food safety courses and was considering being an inspector for a while, I can’t remember it all now but the idea was, bacteria can grow after 30 mins at room temperature and while that bacteria can die at 74°C/165°F, it can grow spores during that time that are heat resistant. You’re not gonna die from food that’s been out for 31 minutes but if you often eat food that’s been sitting out for an hour or more, eventually you might get sick. It’s a game of chance, really. I don’t worry about it too much for myself but if I’m feeding others, I try to stick to the rules. If I get sick from my own carelessness, fair enough, that’s on me. If I get someone else sick though, I’d feel awful.
From Nova Scotia. You got me missing fish and brewis.
I only really do it for Christmas now. It’s one of my favourite parts of Christmas though. Christmas Eve we do fish and brewis, Christmas Day breakfast is fishcakes with the leftover salt fish, potatoes, and drawn butter.
Sounds like you’ll all be having a time in a couple months. I wish an early happy holidays to you.
We can agree that hot mayonaise is kinda gross though and a sign that the food was probably neglected in other ways too.
90% Vegetarian. Chicken and Fish meat only. Canada.
I used to be a chef so I follow food safety guidelines with some wiggle room, since commerical kitchen standards are supposed to protect all kinds of people in a wide variety of circumstances, while I’m fairly healthy and in control of my kitchen/storage.
I don’t let food that’s supposed to be hot sit at room temperature for more than 2hrs max. I keep most starchy fruit and root veggies in loose, hanging bags and berries/greens/less starchy vegetables in the fridge. I usually only buy meat if I’m using it that day, only keep leftovers in the fridge for two-to-three days, and freeze anything else.
Super basic explanation: Bacteria are on anything not sterile or on fire. Most are harmless on their own but some produce shit that makes you sick. Like botulism is caused by the toxin the bacteria produce and not the bacteria itself, and it’s found on vegetables. The bacteria (if they’re not endospores) die with heat but the toxin remains. And with food production all mingled, bacteria from meats can be transferred to non-meat products, too. You can even get sick from raw flour.
Cooked foods have more available sugars and nutrients for bacteria to eat, plus warmth and moisture, so it’s a great environment for bacteria to break out of hibernation, make babies and poop toxins.
Leaving cooked starchy foods out in ideal bacteria party conditions isn’t great, and food poisoning isn’t always throwing up and shitting your guts out. Sometimes it’s a slight headache or a sore throat, and it can happen days or months after the fact. Ever had a 24 flu? Unexplained weird anxiety and a tummy ache that goes away after a day? Food poisoning happens to about 1/10 people worldwide every year.
But whatever, it’s about how much risk you want to take on.
Based on those symptoms I get food poisoning a few times every month :/
When I say some geese are white, it’s not the same as saying all white things are geese.
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Now I’m hungry :/
Meat eater, cooler climate in Australia.
We generally put things in the fridge but are also pretty casual about leaving things out.
There’s a lot of variables that would effect my inclination to consume something that had been left out for whatever period of time.
Cooked Rice is almost a perfect growth medium for bacteria. My Mrs cooks a batch in the rice cooker, doesn’t refrigerate it, but consumes it all within 36 hours. That said, it has just been boiled so you’re starting with almost no bacteria.
Dairy is the worst. Letting milk get to room temperature and leaving it for a half hour or so is going to dramatically reduce it’s lifetime even if you put it back in the fridge afterwards.
Some rice cookers have an extended “keep warm” setting where the temperature remains high enough to prevent the growth of bacteria, allowing you to start a batch in the morning and use it all day or even the next day if needed.
That doesn’t sound right to me.
Rice is serious business in our house.
All rice cookers will switch to a “keep warm” setting after the normal cooking cycle.
I don’t think it’s hot enough to prevent the growth of bacteria, although I’m not sure about that.
It is hot enough for the rice to start to dry out. After a few hours it would be “tough” instead of “soft and fluffy”. After 24 hours it would be inedible.
As I said we just leave it at room temperature in the rice cooker and heat it up in the microwave as necessary. The texture and taste and… toxicity I guess, is fine for 36 hours. So if you cook it this morning then use it all before tomorrow evening.
US. Omnivore.
The food safety recommendations and regulations for commercial Kitchens are there for a reason. That being said, a home setting is very different than a commercial setting.
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The potential for impact is much greater in a commercial environment due to the volume of food and customers served.
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Believe it or not, a home setting is more controlled than a commercial setting: There are (generally) fewer food handlers, service personnel and “customers” touching or breathing on the food/dishes/equipment. And whether any of those individuals pose a disease vector risk is fairly well understood within the household, which can be mitigated on a more granular level. Because you are only serving one table instead of many at different stages of readiness, there is smaller variety of foods in preparation at once, fewer steps in the prep process happening simultaneously, and dirty dishes are only handled after the food has been prepared and eaten, reducing the risk of cross contamination. There are so many vectors for contamination in a commercial setting that the controls are in place to stop little issues from turning in big problems.
All this is to say that I am generally okay leaving finished foods out on my counter for extended periods of time if it has been freshly and properly prepared, or I plan on finishing or pitching it that day.
However, your examples baffle me. Leaving pasta out all day just seams like an unpleasant eating experience, indifferent of the health implications. Soup and lasagna? I can’t imagine wanting either of those early enough in the morning to prepare them so that I could leave them out “all day”. If I’m grabbing leftovers from the fridge, I wouldn’t leave it out. It’s already got a container and a space on the shelf; I just put the rest back where it came from after I take my serving. Sitting on the counter isn’t going to improve it.
Vegetables of course live their entire pre-picked lives without refrigeration and are generally fine on the counter when fresh. I would refrigerate prepared fresh vegetables if I knew I wasn’t going to finish them or they were particularly moist, like cut tomatoes or a dressed salad, or known to turn quickly like avacado.
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Mostly vege/france. I don’t mind leaving food out in the open, especially cakes, pies and cookies. I can confirm that sometimes a few days out are too much, but as long as you check for weird scent/look, you’ll be ok. My parent recently ate boiled meat over the course of a week without putting it in the fridge, leaving it in its pot and reheating each day, they threw the last bit because it smelled bad, but they had no problem before that.
Vegetarian. Northern Europe.
I’ll leave food on the counter until it cools down. Don’t want to bring the temperature up in the fridge too much, and if the food is hot you risk breaking the glass shelves in the fridge from the temperature shock.
Never had any problems. Generally food will get reheated so that kills bacteria. Obviously spoilage produces toxins over time but that doesn’t happen that fast.
I’m generally more casual with it in the winter than in the summer as things spoil faster when it’s warm.
It would bother me at a restaurant or store, since that is proper, legal food safety shit. If it needs to be kept cold, it can’t be out of cold for more than 30 minutes.
However, at home? I don’t care too much. Unless it’s been out all day, I’ll just nuke it and that should kill anything.
Assuming you mean microwaving… Microwaves sadly aren’t magical, their sterilizing capabilities are mostly just the heat. So make sure to evenly heat it through, the same way you’d do it on the stove.
On the counter is fine for quite a while. I feel that putting warm food in the fridge will hurt the texture, so I always wait until it’s room temperature and usually a few hours longer before storing it.
So for the remainder of the day on the counter is fine in my book. Overnight it goes in the fridge.
Special case: Taco meat. I usually put the pan back in the (now cold) oven mostly to save space, and leave it there overnight. When I reheat taco meat I use enough heat to probably kill any bacteria anyway.
I’m sure you’ve heard this so many times before. It’s not necessarily the bacteria itself, but their waste products that put you at risk. I’m not sure what the salt content of taco meat is, and if your taco meat is dry or wet, but I do think you may be putting yourself in this particular instance.
Vegetarian (nearly vegan)/not doxxing myself because I piss many people off unintentionally. Flies are my most consistent concern. So long as the food was shielded from insects and extended temperatures above 25c/70f, I really don’t care to put it away urgently. Tupperware is just exhausting to use. Soup standing overnight isn’t a strange sight, but I eat my leftovers promptly
I leave food on the counter all the time, because If I’m still hungry in a little while, I don’t want my food cold. I have never in my life gotten food poisoning from it.
Omnivore, European. I leave my food outside if I plan to eat it the same day, and wait till it has reached room temperature before I put it in the fridge. Most of the time we leave food in a small room we have which is slightly cooler than living room (16ish degrees in winter I think) and it stays good for as long as there is food left. I have also eaten food that was left in kitchen at room temperature for about two days, but only once or twice with highly acidic food (chili or bolognese).
As long as it smells good and looks good, it’s good. Never had food poisoning in my life.
