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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The ignorance in here of how food can go bad is impressive. Refrigerate within one hour. You don’t need to let it cool down before putting it into the refrigerator.
https://www.cdc.gov/food-safety/prevention/index.html
Bacteria can multiply rapidly if left at room temperature or in the “Danger Zone” between 40°F and 140°F. Never leave perishable food out for more than 2 hours (or 1 hour if exposed to temperatures above 90°F).
Refrigerate perishable food (meat, seafood, dairy, cut fruit, some vegetables, and cooked leftovers) within 2 hours. If the food is exposed to temperatures above 90°F, like a hot car or picnic, refrigerate it within 1 hour.
Package warm or hot food into several clean, shallow containers and then refrigerate. It is okay to put small portions of hot food in the refrigerator since they will chill faster.
Here’s the thing, restaurant level food safety is there to prevent 1 in a million chances of something happening, and usually would only effect those with weak immune systems. It’s a huge overabundance of caution born out of a desire to avoid lawsuits, and if you are serving to the public, you should 100% follow it.
But at home? Personally, I think 1 in a million is overly cautious. I’m fine with 1 in 10,000 and trust my immune system to handle it. I am too poor to throw away perfectly good food because I got lazy after dinner and waited 3 hours to put it away instead of 2. I survived all of college off of pizza that was left at room temperature. And yea, you can cite that one case of the guy who got botulism or something after eating a 3-4 day old pizza, but I want you to think about the millions upon millions of pizzas people eat every day without following restaurant-level food safety and realize how crazy it is to base your entire personal food safety philosophy around avoiding extreme edge cases.
Eat day old pizza, thaw your chicken in the sink, store your food in large containers if it makes more sense than small ones. I promise, you will be fine. You are far more at risk driving to the grocery store to get your ingredients than you are from eating food that’s been at room temperature for a few hours.
That’s not guidance for restaurants. Anecdotal evidence isn’t fact.
Thanks for your US input, really appreciate it. But think about it, most of the people that already commented live outside the US. It seems your guidelines are pretty heavy, also another US american commented the guidelines are so strict because they need to apply to the whole vast country.
Are we all really ignorant, or is it possible there is also a cultural difference in play?
Bacteria doesn’t care about culture. The guidelines are pretty simple: bacteria generally grows on food within a temp range.
It’s not like parts of US has more food-affecting bacteria than others.
Other nonsense in this thread: “if it smells ok it’s ok to eat” some bacteria can’t be detected by scent.
Rice, a common food outside of the US, has a particularly bad bacteria that can survive being cooked and should not be left out or even reheated more than once for example.
Well, bacteria actually care a lot about culture if you allow for this pun.
Like I said, the other commenters from the US say the US guidelines are extra strict so infection will be nearly impossible. This post is a pretty small sample, but from what I gather there is indeed a cultural difference. Not in the biology itself, but in what guidelines exist and how they are interpreted. We are of course talking about a private setting at home in this thread, not about restaurants or industrial kitchens.
Honestly, I feel your tone is a bit rude. Make your points, share tour thoughts, argue. But don’t act like everybody commenting here is stupid.
From the USA, it is important to understand that FDA guidelines are generally geared to ensure a near impossibility for food-bourne illness. That includes people with compromised immune systems and gets applied to all food even if the odds are minimal that something will happen. For instance, a lot of fine dining chefs will forgo minimum cooking temperatures for some ingredients in order to provide a different product.
So, in a private setting and with healthy people, the FDA guidelines are likely overkill
From the CDC website:
“Bacteria can multiply rapidly if left at room temperature or in the “Danger Zone” between 40°F and 140°F. Never leave perishable food out for more than 2 hours (or 1 hour if exposed to temperatures above 90°F).”
Well the US guidelines don’t add very much to the discussion tbh, especially meat vs. veggies. It shows however why US Americans are so sensitive about this topic.
90% Vegetarian. Chicken and Fish meat only. No religion.
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 and I’m fairly healthy.
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. 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 for bacteria to eat, plus warm and moist, 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.
But whatever, it’s about how much risk you want to take on.
One big reason for the US guidelines being so strict is that they apply to the entire country, which ranges from Florida to Alaska and everywhere in between, and they are worst case. Plus with a massive population fed by capitalist companies that value money over lives and frequently altered food for profit, deaths in a large population are going to happen.
I don’t leave stuff that needs refridgeration out for more than a few hours so that it holds up for several days and the time varies widely by food type. Food does need to cool down significantly before refridgerating, although sometimes I will put it in within a couple hours to avoid forgetting. For most foods I have a four hour limit outside the fridge.
Commercially raised chicken has a very high chance of having salmonella. Raw chicken is only out long enough to prepare and cook. Once cooked I don’t worry anymore than anything else.
I also use the dates as rough estimates and when to pay more attention to spoilage. I don’t worry about safety for canned foods that don’t have signs of spoilage, but a soup can a couple years past the best by date has likely probably separated and textures will be off. Dates on bags of chips are a sign they are will be going stale within a few months.
Couple stories for you. Had a tray of 100 hot wings we ordered one night drunk. Left it on the counter for 3 days straight eating out of it until they were gone. They never were brought above or below room temperature for that entire time. We didn’t die.
I also regularly order too much food. Forget to fridge the leftovers, and still eat the crap the next day. I’ve yet to be food poisoned from this.
Maybe I am just lucky.
It’s junk food. Pizza is like that too by being junk food it gets magical powers to stay on the counter until finished
While this is a fun anecdote, yes you are just lucky you didn’t get a food borne illness.
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Omnivore, southeast USA.
When I worked in food service, I was taught that it takes four hours at room temperature for bacteria to reach dangerous levels in food, so that’s what I go with. I assume there’s other factors at play, but four hours is easy to remember and apply and I don’t like to take chances with that stuff.
But I guess it makes a really big difference if it is chicken or carrots, right?
Depends on the food but most goes in. In addition to cooling, the refrigerator is critter proof (ants, mice). Not bread not catsup but most all leftovers
Rural US, no dietary restrictions, 40, married with children
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.
American omnivore.
The only reason I leave things out is if they’ll get soggy in the fridge. This generally applies to pizza and biscuits (in a bag). My gluten free bread is refrigerated because it gets moldy before I finish it, regular bread is on the counter.
If I happen to forget to put away leftovers, I’ll refrigerate them when I get to them as long as they haven’t dried out or anything. I’ve woken up in the middle of the night to do that.
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.
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.
US omnivore.
Most fruit stays on the counter in the fruit bowl (except berries, I want more than a day to eat them), bread, and all unprocessed veg (besides lettuce, again I find it goes bad fast) stays out.
Anything that I have prepared and cooked goes in the fridge when we are done eating it or when it’s approaching room temperature. Sometimes a little warmer if I’m impatient. If we had a pot luck / carry in food sometimes sets out a couple hours NBD, still fridge after.
Red meat gets salted or seasoned and sits out to approx room temp before cooking if I think about it. I don’t do that from frozen (I use sous vide for that defrost), with very large cuts (rib roast for example) or with chicken because I have never noticed it cook unevenly.
The only food that ever really sits out on the counter after preparation is rice or baked goodies (banana bread, cookies, etc.). Anything that sits out overnight is now trash except pizza if it was a late night snack. Anything out is quite rare anyway since we usually clean the kitchen before bed.
Edit: Eggs of course in the fridge, they are washed. Butter also fridge, I know it can stay out but I usually like it harder, we aren’t spreading it that often compared to measuring.
General rule: If the store I bought it from was refrigerating it, so am I.
I like to find a balance between being worried about bacteria and trusting my immune system to deal with anything that comes along. However, my immune system tends to over-react to things that aren’t a threat (allergies to cherries, peaches, cats, dogs, kangaroos, pollen, dust, etc.) so I’d be pretty pissed if it couldn’t handle some bacteria.
I’ll cut the bad parts off an old pepper and still put the good parts on my omelette in the morning. I’ll cut the moldy bit off a piece of cheese and use the rest. Bread…nope. I can handle it being a bit stale, but moldy is too much. I’m not afraid of bread mold, but I don’t like the taste.
Last year I tossed the Thanksgiving turkey out the next day because my wife and I forgot to deal with it and left it sitting on the kitchen table next to the radiator. That seemed to me like it would be a bit too much of a challenge to my immune system.
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.
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.
