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 food is brought up here or there is always this guy saying “omg you can’t leave your food for 30 minutes on the counter because bacteria you know” (exaggerated) 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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So as a person who’s been in that back area of a restaurant, we all know the danger zone is anything above 40F to 140F and the closer you are to that median temperature that median temperature the faster that bacteria multiplies, meat, vegetables, doesn’t matter, as long as the temperature’s right and there’s enough moisture there, they’ll breed like bacteria and there are bacteria that leaves toxins behind that will also make you sick.
So given that, I’ve always put stuff into the fridge as soon as were done eating generally following the two hour rule and it’s been sitting out for more than four hours without refrigeration, I’ll usually toss it.
Ive left excess pasta on the stove overnight, I’ve left pizza open on the counter and eaten it the day after (though if there’s only a couple slices they stay in the microwave on a cutout of the box ready to be nuked in the morning/next days lunch)
Still alive, still haven’t given myself food poisoning
I keep my lunch in my work bag all day, not in the fridge, unless it’s salad where it should be crisp.
I did the European thing where I kept eggs on the counter. It’s best that way. Real unwashed farm eggs, not shit from the grocery store.
We lean towards vegetarian, minimum meat consumption for both health and environmental reasons.
As far as leaving food out…only foods that don’t require refrigeration. Bread, snacks, etc. Anything cooked that is still hot will be allowed to cool before going into the fridge, no need to make the fridge work harder, but it doesn’t stay out long enough to be a food safety problem.
Uncooked foods that are dangers to bacteria growth like meats and the like don’t sit out ever or are carefully thawed. Eggs? They’re fine out of the fridge, just crack them individually into a small bowl to make sure they’re good before use. I think I’ve only ever had one bad egg left out and it was pretty obvious, they just last a lot longer if refrigerated. Greens and other veg just wilt and dehydrate if not used quickly unless refrigerated, but leaving them out isn’t an issue. They get washed before use.
Anyway…I do most all the cooking and take food safety seriously. I’ve had one serious bout of food poisoning from a restaurant and that made death seem like a viable option vs the misery of constantly evacuating everything in your body for a few days, and the memory stuck with me. You can cook great food that’s been prepared to the correct and safe temperature, and I have little issue with foods that have been cooked like this, left out to cool and refrigerated, then reheated to a proper temperature.
Also… thinking rice or pastas are fine left out because no animal proteins, think again.
Ants are everywhere in south east asia so I’d never or build a little tower with a water bowl underneath it.
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.
Another factor that hasn’t been mentioned: I’m young and healthy, I don’t want to have salmonella, but I’m pretty sure I’d probably be okay. If I am sick or cooking for people who have weak immune systems for whatever reasons, I do much stricter than for my lazy bachelor self.
Otherwise, I live by “if it smells and looks good, it’s probably good”. Obvious conditions apply of course, in hot, humid weather, I’m trying to leave nothing out, in cold weather, I’ll happily eat cold pizza from the day before.
I’m vegan. Generally speaking, whatever we cook for dinner gets left out overnight. I’ll chuck the pan in the oven so the cats don’t lick it, but unless it’s hot/summer then food is usually fine at room temp for 24hrs. Been doing this for 20+ years.
I am the same. Vegetarian.
Unless the food contains uncooked dairy (milk, cream etc) or eggs (home made mayo) it can usually stay in a covered dish over night without refrigeration. It was the same at my parents house, except for fish and meat dishes.
Never had a food borne illness from my own cooking, my parents’ or the left overs.
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/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.
France/omnivore (with a slight pref for veggies).
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.
To me it’s lack of education (fear of bacteria is not a bad thing, over-exaggerating it and forgetting or whole body is made to deal with them and some are even legit part of our body is… excessive), and a cultural thing.
I mean, in the US for example they will even shrink wrap individual fruits because ‘food exposed to the air is bad’ even though fruits have developed their skin just for that purpose, and even though most of the fruits sold over there have been so intensely chemically treated they could last for centuries before starting to decay (there may be hint of sarcasm here, just a hint).
Also, I wonder how many of those ‘worried persons’ systematically wash their hands before they grab any food? The same hands they grab their bacteria saturated phone with all day long, or pick their nose, or scratch their balls (or whatever part of the body they need to scratch), or shake hands with other people (whose personal hygiene and what they do with their hands they have no idea)… The risk is at the very least as high to grab some nasty thing just by not washing one’s hands before eating and preparing something to eat.
On the other, being French, I have no shame in admitting I appreciate some of our cheese that don’t fear being left to… age, attacked by bacteria ;)
My opinion is that food should not be left out in the air without any reason (it’s messy and risky) but depending the food it can. But it certainly is not a matter of leaving it 30 minutes, unless weather conditions are very specific. Never heard that 30 minutes remark, btw.
Thanks for your answer. I exaggerated with the 30 minutes, I will edit the post to make that clear.
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.
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.
There are some bacteria that when they die, release toxins that are harmful. So cooking alone isn’t enough to render them harmless.
From the Canadian food agency’s website:
Staphylococcus aureus, Bacillus cereus, E. coli O157:H7, Clostridium botulinum, Clostridium perfringens and Clostridium difficile.
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.
Europe. Technically meat eater but not an “identity” and generally prefer veggie.
This rule makes no intuitive sense, or factual sense. It sounds like one of those US-specific things that have spread through “everyone knows” like the 3 second rule.
We have other nonsense rules here, basically.
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!I’m not, I’m dead. BTW I ate a carrot that had been on the counter for almost an hour.
…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 their 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 think context is also important. At home I eat all kinds of things that have been all kinds of places for various amounts of time. I grew up eating fruit straight off the vine after a quick shine with my shirt (and nectar in the case of honeysuckle).
When I’m handling food for my patients I take no chances. Even the ones without specific immune disorders are under high bodily stress while being exposed to shit that’s basically been bred for resistance to antimicrobials. My husband has only had one hospital job but has been working in bulk production kitchens longer than my entire career in healthcare. If one item does go bad it can spread to the others pretty quickly. Another issue is that while I wash my hands plenty at home and also so compulsively at work that I have to use dimethicone lotion to keep my skin together, I can’t actually guarantee that my coworkers do. Wish I could, but I’m not pressing my ears to the breakroom door to do it. I know I washed my hands before touching the patients’ breakfasts but I’m too busy focusing on my own job to tell you for certain that anybody else did so yeah there really might be something growing on those trays an hour or two later.
So at home, no I don’t really care. But in high volume kitchens and institutional environments it’s important enough that my husband actually knows all the specific times and temperatures off the top of his head.
