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For the most part, leftovers are great. They are an easy meal to just heat up and eat, and sometimes they taste even better than when they were originally served. But it turns out that leftovers can actually be very dangerous, and even deadly. Unfortunately, that was the case for a 20-year-old student, who passed away after eating five-day-old pasta.
His story was described in the Journal of Clinical Microbiology a few years back, but has since resurfaced due to some YouTube videos and Reddit posts. According to article, every Sunday the student would make his meals for the entire week so he wouldn't need to deal with making it on the weekdays. One Sunday, he cooked up some spaghetti, then put it in Tupperware containers so that days later, he could just add some sauce to it, reheat it and enjoy it.
However, he didn't store the pasta in the fridge, rather he left it out on the counter. After five days of the food sitting out at room temperature, he heated some up and ate it. While he noticed an odd taste to the food, he figured it was just due to the new tomato sauce he added to it. Once he finished his serving, he headed out to play some sports with friends, but after 30 minutes, he had to return home because of nausea, abdominal pain and a headache. Not long after, he was experiencing diarrhea and vomiting, so he drank some water and tried to sleep it off. The next day, he didn't get out of bed for his classes so his parents checked in on him and sadly, he had died.
Investigators examined his body and determined that he passed away at around 4 a.m., ten hours after ingesting the spaghetti. His autopsy showed his liver had shut down and his cause of death was ruled to be liver necrosis. To discover how it happened, samples of the pasta and the tomato sauce he ate were sent for testing to the National Reference Laboratory for Food-borne Outbreaks. Scientists there uncovered significant amounts of a bacteria called Bacillus cereus in the food. In most cases, the bacteria only causes diarrhea and vomiting, but, like in the student's case, there are extreme instances where it can affect the liver and lead to the organ's failure.
The bacteria is best known for causing a type of food poisoning called "Fried Rice Syndrome," since rice is sometimes cooked and left to cool at room temperature for a few hours. During that time, the bacteria can contaminate it and grow. B. cereus is especially dangerous because it produces a toxin in rice and other starchy foods that is heat resistant and may not die when the food it infects is cooked.
B. cereus is scarily common too. Previously, an entire family got sick from it after eating eight-day-old pasta salad at a picnic. To prevent the bacteria from making you ill, just be sure that any starchy food you consume has not been kept at room temperature for an extended period of time. When in doubt, you can try to cook it at a high temperature and attempt to kill off any bacteria, but your best bet is to just not eat it.