Reheating does not undo the afternoon

Not if it sat out first, and the reason is the one fact this page rests on. People who corrected the mistake, one person each time, and a handful of other individual people explain it: heat kills living bacteria, but some bacteria, while they were growing in warm food, made toxins that heat does not break down. Cooked rice is the textbook case — some people call it one of the easiest foods to poison yourself with — because the bacterium that loves it survives cooking as a spore, wakes as the rice cools on the hob, and leaves behind a toxin that a microwave cannot touch; one person was ill after reheating rice thoroughly and could not understand why. So the whole game is the cooling, not the reheating. Some people say portion rice out to cool fast, or freeze it straight away; individual people spread it thin on a tray, leave the lid off and stir after ten minutes so the middle cools too, and freeze single portions in tubs shaped so you never chip a lump off a frozen block. For a big pot of stew or soup, some people say the same — split it into shallow containers, or stand a frozen bottle of water in it, before it goes in the fridge; one person warns a hot pot put straight in warms everything around it. How long cooked rice keeps in the fridge is argued three ways here — one day, three to four, up to a week — and this page gives you the authorities’ envelope rather than a vote: British food-safety guidance says cool it within an hour, keep it no more than a day, reheat until steaming hot and only once; United States guidance for leftovers generally says into the fridge within two hours — one hour on a hot day — and eaten within three to four days. The one-day rule is the safe one for rice; the freezer removes the question. One person warns if you stretch rice all week and never get ill, check the fridge is actually cold, and one person says illness from leftover rice is rare when the cooling was done right — it is the warm afternoon that does the harm, not the leftovers.

Both, depending on how green, and people’s argument about it is real. Some people say a potato that has gone green has made solanine, a natural poison, and that cooking does not remove it; some say peeling does not make a heavily green potato safe. People corrected the myth the discussions began from, one person each time: green is not ‘unripe’, and a green potato does not come right with time or heat. Some people correct the opposite confusion: the green itself is not the poison — it is chlorophyll from light — but it is the flag that the tuber has woken up and is making poison, and one person says that can also happen when a potato is hit, cut or bitten by an animal, not only when it sees light. People argue peel-or-bin, and this page checked the science so you do not have to vote: the European food-safety authority’s assessment says the poison sits mainly in the peel and sprouts, that peeling removes a quarter to three quarters of it, that a bitter or burning taste is the body’s own warning, and that sprouts carry very high levels. So the envelope is this. A firm potato with one green patch: peel it deeply, cut the patch and any eyes out, and if it tastes bitter, stop. A potato green all round, one with thick green under the skin when you cut it, or one that is sprouting: bin it — people warn, one person each, the toxin can be present past the green, and a potato green all through is not for eating. Never the leaves, stems or fruit of the plant, nor the eyes; the European authority adds the sprouts. How ill does it make you? Some people say a healthy adult would need to eat a great deal of green potato to be in danger, and that the usual result is a stomach upset — nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, in the authority’s words, and in severe cases drowsiness and confusion — while children, pregnant people and the elderly have less margin. Some people say they have eaten green potatoes for years without harm, and people argue whether that is safety or luck, some people on each side. One person says modern varieties are bred lower in the poison, and one person warns wild or heirloom varieties may not be, and want more care. Keep them dark, cool and dry, one person warns, and one person says the clear bag under supermarket lights is where the greening starts. One person with arthritis suspects green potatoes worsen it; that is one person and a doctor’s question. Thresholds, home tests and the symptoms of mild poisoning are not covered here.

Some people carry the story and the mechanism people give is the wrong one, so this page corrects it: rotting potatoes in an enclosed store do not give off poisonous fumes of the potato toxin, which does not turn into a gas. What they do is rot, and rotting vegetable matter in an unventilated space gives off carbon dioxide and uses up oxygen, so the air near the floor of a sealed cellar can stop supporting life. That is how a family in Russia died in 2014, one after another, going down to find the one before — asphyxiation, the reports say, not poisoning. The rule stands whatever the mechanism: do not go into a closed cellar or store where potatoes have rotted until it has been aired, and do not go in after someone who has collapsed there — get them air from outside and call for help. For a bag under the sink, none of this applies; it is a matter of enclosed rooms and quantity.

It depends which date it is, and some people say the printed date is an estimate made for ideal storage. British labelling rules draw the line this page uses: a use-by date is about safety, and food should not be eaten after it — with the one exception that food cooked or frozen before the use-by date may be eaten later; a best-before date is about quality, and food is usually safe after it if it looks and smells right. One person adds the condition that undoes both: a date assumes the fridge was cold and the power stayed on, and one person says a power cut spoils meat well inside its date. People argue smell against the calendar; one person says the nose beats the date for meat, one says milk seldom turns quietly — when it has gone you will know — and one says time rules matter because senses can fail. This page’s answer is the authorities’: for a use-by date, the date wins; for a best-before, your senses decide. One person gives windows for how long opened condiments last and says small packets suit a household that seldom uses them; the specific windows are theirs and not checked here.

Some people say meat and seafood: if you are not sure, it goes, whatever it cost. Individual people add the details. Anything that touched raw meat, fish or poultry — flour, breadcrumbs, a marinade, a board — is cooked at once as part of the same meal or thrown away; one person allows flour that dredged raw chicken to go straight into a gravy in the same pan, but not to be kept. Boiling meat that has turned, one person says, may kill what is living in it and still leave you ill from what those bacteria left behind, and it tastes of the fact. Tins and jars with a domed lid, a leak or a spurt when opened are not tasted — one person says the toxin can be lethal, and the public-health line at the top of the page says you cannot see, smell or taste it. Home canning is done from a tested recipe with a pressure canner, some people warn, not from advice traded online; one person says old family recipes assume vinegar strengths that have changed, and one says a batch interrupted for a day is a batch to throw away. Food from a bin, or from a kitchen whose hygiene you did not see, is a risk people take with their eyes open or not at all. Cooking temperatures for meat, and what to do with an expensive ingredient once it is compromised, are not covered here.

People know, and they argue about it. People argue whether eating the green bits is an acceptable risk, some people on each side, and one person says a strong constitution buys you past the two-hour rule while some people say it does not. The side that says throw it out does not say you are careless; it does the sum. Individual people count what one bout of food poisoning costs — a day or a week off work, a pharmacy bill or a clinic visit, the cleaning up — against the value of the rice or the flour, and find the rice loses every time. One person says the frugal move is not to keep risky food but to cook smaller amounts more often, so nothing sits; one says stretch rice by freezing portions, not by refrigerating a week of it; and people argue, one person each way, whether the real problem is the price of food or not knowing how to store it, and the answer they reach is that the same money buys the same food either way — what changes is when you cook it. One person puts it plainly: not having been ill yet is luck, and luck is not a method. The people who take the risk anyway are here too, and one caveat covers them: it is your risk to take with your own plate, and not with anyone else’s.

For a stomach upset, people say fluids and rest, and this page stops at the door of medicine: one person uses oral rehydration and bland food, and one person warns anti-diarrhoea medicine is not always the right move because the body is trying to clear the toxin — ask a pharmacist. One person points out some food poisoning comes on within hours, not the day or two people expect, and some people say it can last far longer than a couple of days. The red flags are in the safety line at the top: blood at either end, high fever, faintness or confusion, or fluids that will not stay down mean medical help now, and one person warns a pinch of skin that does not spring back is a sign the rehydration is losing. One person says do not go to work with it: it helps no one and ends in discomfort or embarrassment. If wild mushrooms were involved, one person says a photograph of what you ate helps the doctors. Treatment beyond that is not covered here, because it is not a page’s to answer.