Lurking inside your reheated fried rice is a harmful bacterial killer—no less than, that’s what you would possibly suppose after watching one of many newest viral movies shared on TikTok and different social media platforms. There’s a grain of fact to this declare, and you need to attempt to correctly retailer your leftovers, however the dangers of so-called fried rice syndrome shouldn’t be overblown.
The story of fried rice syndrome pops up on-line each every now and then, extra not too long ago in a TikTok video from cooking and residential items firm Food52, posted final week. Within the video, meals editor Emily Ziemski discusses the tiny offender behind the syndrome, Bacillus cereus. And to Ziemski’s credit score, the gist of the video is correct.
The Hardy Germ
B. cereus, a detailed relative of the micro organism liable for anthrax, is a well-known cause of meals poisoning. Illness-causing strains of B. cereus produce plenty of toxins when actively rising, and it’s these toxins that truly make individuals sick. There are two principal types of foodborne B. cereus sickness, with barely totally different signs. In a single, you get sick from the toxins produced by the micro organism as soon as they get inside and infect you; within the different, you get sick from already-produced toxins that you simply ingest.
B. cereus micro organism are ubiquitous within the atmosphere, significantly in soil, to allow them to simply find yourself in our meals provide. And although they are often caught from quite a lot of meals like dairy, beef, and greens, the sickness they trigger is commonly related to reheated fried rice and different leftovers, for an excellent motive. These micro organism can shapeshift right into a spore-like kind to outlive inhospitable environments, together with hot and cold temperatures. As soon as the circumstances are ripe once more, they begin rising and producing toxins en masse. So circumstances of illness do are typically linked to improperly saved meals.
A standard situation goes like this: You allow an unfinished bowl of rice that was in some unspecified time in the future contaminated with B. cereus spores sitting out on the kitchen counter for a number of hours. Throughout that point, the micro organism break away and develop to their coronary heart’s content material. If the individual eats the meals then and there, they’ll get contaminated and shortly sufficient sickened by the micro organism’s toxins. And even when they reheat the rice to kill all of the lively micro organism, there’s one specific heat-resistant B. cereus toxin that may linger within the meals and make us sick that approach.
The above is strictly why well being companies and specialists recommend that rice be served and eaten quickly after it’s been cooked or taken off excessive warmth. It’s additionally why rice and different grains destined to be leftovers needs to be refrigerated pretty shortly, inside an hour if attainable. On the similar time, the video would possibly provide the impression that leftover rice will inevitably make you significantly sick if it’s stored out even a smidge too lengthy, and that’s not fairly proper both.
A Actual however Modest Nuisance
For starters, whereas the everyday signs of B. cereus sickness are disagreeable (both nausea, vomiting, and cramps or diarrhea, relying on the sort you get), they’re comparatively delicate, with most circumstances clearing up on their very own inside a day. B. cereus could cause extreme, even deadly sickness, however solely not often and often beneath particular circumstances, like somebody having a weakened immune system. The nastiness of a case may depend upon components like the quantity of micro organism or toxin that an individual ingests. In a single notorious case that acquired renewed consideration last fall, for example, a 20-year-old man is believed to have died from consuming B. cereus contaminated pasta that was left at room temperature for a whopping 5 days earlier than he reheated it.
It’s not significantly frequent within the U.S., both. In line with a 2011 study from the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention, roughly 63,000 circumstances of foodborne B. cereus are estimated to happen yearly within the U.S., together with 20 hospitalizations (the research additionally estimates zero yearly deaths on common, however these nonetheless would possibly occur now and again). For comparability, the one most typical foodborne an infection—norovirus—is assumed to trigger about 5.5 million circumstances of meals poisoning yearly.
All that stated, B. cereus sickness can and does occur typically sufficient to be a real public well being concern. And opposite to the hypothesis of many commentators on Food52’s TikTok and different social media posts, individuals in rice-loving components of the world like Asia are usually not proof against it.
In line with a 2020 study from China’s CDC, for example, B. cereus was the fourthmost bacterial reason behind foodborne outbreaks with a identified offender within the nation between 2003 and 2017. One other paper published final 12 months discovered that there have been greater than 400 reported outbreaks of B. cereus inside China from 2010 to 2020, which led to no less than 7,892 circumstances, 2,786 hospital admissions, and 5 deaths (as is commonly true with foodborne sickness, the precise variety of circumstances is probably going increased).
As for why some individuals can readily consider that nobody ever will get sick from leftover rice, the reply might be easy. Tummyaches and different gastro signs are a typical function of life. And until it was an particularly unhealthy bout of meals poisoning, we’d simply simply neglect mundane episodes that occurred to us or our family members, and even mistakenly blame the improper meal once we do keep in mind them.
So sure, try to be cautious about the way you retailer and reheat your meals, particularly when you’ve got a well being situation that makes you extra susceptible to foodborne infections basically. And you need to positively throw out the five-day-old takeaway container left on the kitchen counter. However, barring excessive circumstances, there are a lot deadlier issues on the market than your typical bowl of reheated rice.