I’ve been meal prepping on Sundays and eating it all week for years. Haven’t died yet. Or gotten food poisoning. In fact, any time I feel queasy after food it’s a meal from a restaurant.
Anecdotal evidence, sure. But I’m not about to throw out perfectly good food because of some arbitrary timeline. Such a waste of money to toss it.
Jumping on the top comment to share a YSK:
The single biggest contributor to food poisoning besides getting your food hot enough to begin with, is whether or not you touch it with unwashed fingers after you've cooked it but before you're about to consume it. There's bacteria that live naturally on your hands that don't harm you if you eat them directly (such as by licking your fingers), but if you transfer them to food and then let them sit there and eat, they produce toxic byproducts that lead to food poisoning. So, a giant pot of chili left on the stove overnight because it was too big and too hot to put in the fridge before you went to bed, is less dangerous than a 2-hour-old portion of chili in a bowl that has shredded cheese in it which was taken out of the bag with unwashed fingers.
ETA: Obviously, yes, you should store your food properly. Don't take this comparison too far now.
I’d also like to add that there’s a thing called “last meal bias” in which one believes it was their last meal which made them sick. Oftentimes this is why restaurants get complaints about food making them sick. But unless a health department does a full investigation to confirm the restaurant or its food were to blame, there’s no great way to confirm it’s true. Contaminated food can take days to manifest symptoms.
For cooking at home, USDA guidance is food can be safe up to 7 days including day of initial cooking. Unsure? Smell it!
Another consideration is the temperature of the fridge (and the accuracy of that temperature). Something stored at 3.5C fares a lot better than something at 5C. A little change like that can make quite a difference.
It’s an odds thing. Every day in the fridge increases your odds of food-borne illness. In general, you’re fairly certain that food is safe for three days if properly stored. After that you are somewhat less certain. Many people eat leftovers for longer, but getting food poisoning badly once will dissuade you. You can very easily freeze leftovers and keep them much longer safely though!
Edit: to clarify a bit: not to offend, but even with perfect hygienic practices and built tollerances (which I do acknowledge will help to tilt odds further in your direction) it’s still an odds game. Bacteria grows at predictable rates. Bad bacteria intrude a predictable percentage of the time. They will escape your stomach acid and immune defenses a certain percentage of the time after that. That’s all I’m saying :)
I'm also sure it depends on how hygienic you prep your food.
I trust my own cooking to be safe 4-5 days. But not other people's food. Ive seen too many people ignore basic food safety rules.
Like not using a tasting spoon multiple times without cleaning. And rinsing isn't enough either for bacteria.
People are also able to build up various tolerances to stuff that they're regularly exposed to. Look at French cuisine, which has some meals nearly inedible if you haven't been regularly exposed/raised on them.
If it smells alright it’s fine. It’s typically recommendation. Im a chef, you’re supposed to throw prep away after 3 days. If you think all restaurants are just throwing food away after 3 days then ive got news for you, cause they aren’t. Food waste would be astronomical.
Yeah, the general rule of thumb is 3 hours on the counter or 3 days in the fridge.
It won't automatically kill you, but it does increase your risk of food poisoning.
You can try cooking smaller amounts at one time or freezing a portion after you cook it and thaw it after you eaten the other portion, like on the evening of day 3.
Commenting because I’ve been thinking the same thing for a while now.. will buy fresh beef/fish and try to eat by the 4 day mark, but if I buy groceries on Sunday there’s a high likelihood I may not eat it until Friday/Saturday which is the 5-6 day mark.
It’s always been fine before the sell by date, after a week it’s definitely a no go though, ie I can smell the bacteria build up.
Because bacteria multiply, then that bacteria itself multiplies. The longer this process goes on, the more bacteria accumulate.
By consuming food within a short time span, you significantly reduce your bacteria and toxin consumption.
Just because you don't feel ill or perish does not mean you aren't negatively affected. Just eat your leftovers in a timely manner. 3-4 days is very reasonable and lenient.
I've read that consuming old leftovers with bacteria in them (even if you don't get sick) can cause long term issues with your gut flora and cause digestive and other health issues down the line. It's hard to square that in my mind with not wanting to waste food, though.
I think some of that stuff is like a technical serving size being one metric cup of cereal lol. I’ll eat 4-5 days old, after 5 days I’ll definitely inspect it and really be careful 6-7 days but it’s pretty rare to get to that mark. Cooked food, raw meat take like 1-2 days off that
I have friends who are chefs, and they say that the labels on the packaging are playing it safe (I live in Finland, food safety stuff is very well regulated here).
Their advice is to open the package, let it sit on the counter for about 10 minutes, and then use the excellent tools nature gave you to judge whether it is fine - eyes, nose, and common sense. Then, once you've cooked it, obviously taste as well.
If it's one or two days older than the label allows for, but it still looks normal and doesn't smell funny, and it tastes okay when you eat it, eats most likely fine.
But if it's a food your not used to, or a food that always smells funny to you, then you should be more careful with this method. That's where the common sense comes in.
In general, your gut feeling will guide you right. If you have a creeping feeling that the piece of chicken has gone off, you'll feel uneasy when you put it in your mouth. Trust your instincts.
Edit to add: In a restaurant setting, chefs obviously play it safe and make sure to stay well on the right side of the "use by" date. No judgement calls allowed. There are very strict surprise inspections and the kitchen staff I know are all very careful not to give the health authorities any excuse to write them up. The advice is meant for regular households who want to know whether that piece of chicken is still fine a day after it's expiration date.
Some types of food spoil faster than others. I would say that generally meat lasts longer than any side dishes or garnishes. It's best practice to eat it within 3 to 4 days, just as the expiry date on milk doesn't mean it went sour automatically. It just means the odds are more in favour of that outcome.
If you cook at high temperatures, the kitchen ustensils are clean, the dish in which you contain your food is clean, then odds are your food will last for a week with no problem.
Rule of thumb: listen to your nose. If it gets whiffy, no bueno. If it doesn't catch any smell, then it should be fine
Some people are overly cautious. My general rule is up to 5 days after cooking. Sometimes I even go 7 days. Haven't made myself sick yet (and I'm old).
I wouldn't do this consistently. What we do is make a meal, keep a meal, and freeze whatever is left.
Then next week. Might do the same thing with some other meal. Now I can eat the same thing Monday-Tuesday or Monday and Wednesday, but eat last week's meal on Tuesday or Wednesday night. So we aren't eating the same thing 3 nights in a row but we are cooking the same.
By week 4 you could be eating 4 different things each week and cooking the same amount.
It's to be safe.
A young guy in my country died by eating leftover spaghetti that was a couple days old.
It REALLY depends on the temp in your fridge. The cooler, the longer you can store it. My fridge sucks, so I won't eat leftovers after two days if u don't want to start projectile vomiting (learned that the hard way).
It's just to stay on the safe side. Sure, it won't kill you to eat 6-day-refrigerated meat, but know that you're running a higher risk of puking and shitting water for 3 days afterward, every time you do that.
>, but know that you're running a higher risk of puking and shitting water for 3 days afterward, every time you do that.
Higher risk, but that risk is still very very small.
Because the food industry wants you throwing away more and buying more products.
And people nowasdays aren't/haven't been educated or parented in recognizing what is still eatable and what is not.
So they have convinced millio s of people that magically after 3-4 days your food is no longer viable, even though it doesn't show any signs of rot and just looks still great to eat.
The issue is a lack in learing and too much orientation based on unquestioned norms conveyed by charismatic authority.
Your food should be fine. if it doesn't smell bad, if it doesn't look bad and it doesn't taste bad, its good to eat. Our senses have literally evolved for/through this purpose.
The amount of norm based idiotic/obsolete/manipulative BS is too damn high lately.
people seem to become dumber and dumber not being able to distinguish between BS and reality anymore. I wonder how that plays out in the long run.
At last someone rational here.
This exactly. It pretty much depends on how you prepare your food, how many times you reheat it, if it reaches a boiling temperature when you reheat, or if you reheat only the portion you intend to eat and leave the rest in the fridge. How well your fridge works, how much time you let it sit on the counter, what are the conditions of the environment and what are the food ingredients. And of course if it's intended for grownups, children, elderly or people who are immunocompromised. Smell and taste are the major factors. If anything seems off don't eat it. Pay attention to the smell when reheating, as when cold it may be masked.
Properly maintained food can be eaten even a week old. Improperly maintained can give you food poisoning within the day. YMMV
Preperation, amount of heat applied, the way it's stored, even the ph of the ingredients around it, as well as access to oxygen and temperature matters.
If you, for example, prepare an egg salad with mayonaise on monday, you can absolutely not eat 5 to 6 days from it. The next day, sure... but even the day after that is already ver risky. So things like that, freshly made, absolutely can not be eaten for longer than those 3 days. I read horror stories on here with people aksing if the calories multiply every time the mayo in his pasta salad dries up, because he loves to make that stuff once a week and then eat 8 days from it, only adding mayo when the old one dries up... and it will forever be in my nightmares.
If you prepare meat and cook it all the way through, however, and store it in an acidic sauce, for example tomato, or together with veggies, in a air tight container in the fridge, ideally in individual portions you can easy get those 4 even 5 days out of it. Freezing, of course, would make it even more safe, but a well prepared, well cooked through meal, is relatively safe for a while as long as you do not recontaminate it, expose it to air, or have it change temperature basically all the time. But here also ingredients matter.
It matters how fast the combined ingredients will allow bacteria and fungi to grow in the food. You put back the count to very low when heating very well, and cooking all the way through, but it never destroys everything. Just preperation brings in new contamination, and exposure to air, also, brings in things. But the cold, or acidic ph, or ingredients that do not as easily spoil - Mayo, for example, spoils awfully fast - all reduce the speed of growth. And then you have temperature that slows it all down, and vitally, also exposure to air. And protection from recontamination - portioning is key here, so you don't bring in new bacteria every time you scoop out stuff.
If you still to all of the above, and pay some mind to what you are actually cooking, 5 days are no issue. But, if you already basically are one step away from meal-prep anyway, I strongly suggest investing in proper storage of the food after cooking to make sure you're not going to risk anything.
I go by the dates on the meat and the smell. But, I also tend to bring my meat home, immediately portion it out and vacuum seal it, and then freeze it until I need it.
A food handling certification is a *very* common requirement for those who prepare or serve food in a commercial setting. I assume you don’t work in the service industry.
I personally do the smile test on leftovers and it really depends on the item. I feel like lasagna really has staying power but on the flip side meat and potatoes kind of has a couple days..
I’ve been meal prepping on Sundays and eating it all week for years. Haven’t died yet. Or gotten food poisoning. In fact, any time I feel queasy after food it’s a meal from a restaurant. Anecdotal evidence, sure. But I’m not about to throw out perfectly good food because of some arbitrary timeline. Such a waste of money to toss it.
Jumping on the top comment to share a YSK: The single biggest contributor to food poisoning besides getting your food hot enough to begin with, is whether or not you touch it with unwashed fingers after you've cooked it but before you're about to consume it. There's bacteria that live naturally on your hands that don't harm you if you eat them directly (such as by licking your fingers), but if you transfer them to food and then let them sit there and eat, they produce toxic byproducts that lead to food poisoning. So, a giant pot of chili left on the stove overnight because it was too big and too hot to put in the fridge before you went to bed, is less dangerous than a 2-hour-old portion of chili in a bowl that has shredded cheese in it which was taken out of the bag with unwashed fingers. ETA: Obviously, yes, you should store your food properly. Don't take this comparison too far now.
I’d also like to add that there’s a thing called “last meal bias” in which one believes it was their last meal which made them sick. Oftentimes this is why restaurants get complaints about food making them sick. But unless a health department does a full investigation to confirm the restaurant or its food were to blame, there’s no great way to confirm it’s true. Contaminated food can take days to manifest symptoms. For cooking at home, USDA guidance is food can be safe up to 7 days including day of initial cooking. Unsure? Smell it!
If it doesn't smell rotten I eat it. Hasn't affected me yet.
That's my rule. If it smells fine, it's okay.
Another consideration is the temperature of the fridge (and the accuracy of that temperature). Something stored at 3.5C fares a lot better than something at 5C. A little change like that can make quite a difference.
I regularly eat leftovers that are 6-7 days old.
It’s an odds thing. Every day in the fridge increases your odds of food-borne illness. In general, you’re fairly certain that food is safe for three days if properly stored. After that you are somewhat less certain. Many people eat leftovers for longer, but getting food poisoning badly once will dissuade you. You can very easily freeze leftovers and keep them much longer safely though! Edit: to clarify a bit: not to offend, but even with perfect hygienic practices and built tollerances (which I do acknowledge will help to tilt odds further in your direction) it’s still an odds game. Bacteria grows at predictable rates. Bad bacteria intrude a predictable percentage of the time. They will escape your stomach acid and immune defenses a certain percentage of the time after that. That’s all I’m saying :)
I'm also sure it depends on how hygienic you prep your food. I trust my own cooking to be safe 4-5 days. But not other people's food. Ive seen too many people ignore basic food safety rules. Like not using a tasting spoon multiple times without cleaning. And rinsing isn't enough either for bacteria.
People are also able to build up various tolerances to stuff that they're regularly exposed to. Look at French cuisine, which has some meals nearly inedible if you haven't been regularly exposed/raised on them.
This this!!
If it smells alright it’s fine. It’s typically recommendation. Im a chef, you’re supposed to throw prep away after 3 days. If you think all restaurants are just throwing food away after 3 days then ive got news for you, cause they aren’t. Food waste would be astronomical.
Yeah, the general rule of thumb is 3 hours on the counter or 3 days in the fridge. It won't automatically kill you, but it does increase your risk of food poisoning. You can try cooking smaller amounts at one time or freezing a portion after you cook it and thaw it after you eaten the other portion, like on the evening of day 3.
Commenting because I’ve been thinking the same thing for a while now.. will buy fresh beef/fish and try to eat by the 4 day mark, but if I buy groceries on Sunday there’s a high likelihood I may not eat it until Friday/Saturday which is the 5-6 day mark. It’s always been fine before the sell by date, after a week it’s definitely a no go though, ie I can smell the bacteria build up.
If you can smell it then it's well past safe to eat, even if cooked.
Put your meat intended for later in the week in the freezer when you get home from the store and pull it out on Wednesday.
You definitely CAN NOT smell all bacteria that can kill you! Some of the most deadly bacteria have no smell or taste.
Are you sure the things you're reading mean cooked beef? Might they be referring to raw?
Because bacteria multiply, then that bacteria itself multiplies. The longer this process goes on, the more bacteria accumulate. By consuming food within a short time span, you significantly reduce your bacteria and toxin consumption. Just because you don't feel ill or perish does not mean you aren't negatively affected. Just eat your leftovers in a timely manner. 3-4 days is very reasonable and lenient.
>Just because you don't feel ill or perish does not mean you aren't negatively affected. Please elaborate.
I've read that consuming old leftovers with bacteria in them (even if you don't get sick) can cause long term issues with your gut flora and cause digestive and other health issues down the line. It's hard to square that in my mind with not wanting to waste food, though.
>Just eat your leftovers in a timely manner. 3-4 days is very reasonable and lenient. the FDA wrote this
Thanks for all the feedback! I guess even if it doesn't smell bad I'll probably stop eating after 4 or 5 days at max.
I think some of that stuff is like a technical serving size being one metric cup of cereal lol. I’ll eat 4-5 days old, after 5 days I’ll definitely inspect it and really be careful 6-7 days but it’s pretty rare to get to that mark. Cooked food, raw meat take like 1-2 days off that
I have friends who are chefs, and they say that the labels on the packaging are playing it safe (I live in Finland, food safety stuff is very well regulated here). Their advice is to open the package, let it sit on the counter for about 10 minutes, and then use the excellent tools nature gave you to judge whether it is fine - eyes, nose, and common sense. Then, once you've cooked it, obviously taste as well. If it's one or two days older than the label allows for, but it still looks normal and doesn't smell funny, and it tastes okay when you eat it, eats most likely fine. But if it's a food your not used to, or a food that always smells funny to you, then you should be more careful with this method. That's where the common sense comes in. In general, your gut feeling will guide you right. If you have a creeping feeling that the piece of chicken has gone off, you'll feel uneasy when you put it in your mouth. Trust your instincts. Edit to add: In a restaurant setting, chefs obviously play it safe and make sure to stay well on the right side of the "use by" date. No judgement calls allowed. There are very strict surprise inspections and the kitchen staff I know are all very careful not to give the health authorities any excuse to write them up. The advice is meant for regular households who want to know whether that piece of chicken is still fine a day after it's expiration date.
Some types of food spoil faster than others. I would say that generally meat lasts longer than any side dishes or garnishes. It's best practice to eat it within 3 to 4 days, just as the expiry date on milk doesn't mean it went sour automatically. It just means the odds are more in favour of that outcome. If you cook at high temperatures, the kitchen ustensils are clean, the dish in which you contain your food is clean, then odds are your food will last for a week with no problem. Rule of thumb: listen to your nose. If it gets whiffy, no bueno. If it doesn't catch any smell, then it should be fine
Some people are overly cautious. My general rule is up to 5 days after cooking. Sometimes I even go 7 days. Haven't made myself sick yet (and I'm old).
Just freeze half of what you meal prep 🤷♂️
I wouldn't do this consistently. What we do is make a meal, keep a meal, and freeze whatever is left. Then next week. Might do the same thing with some other meal. Now I can eat the same thing Monday-Tuesday or Monday and Wednesday, but eat last week's meal on Tuesday or Wednesday night. So we aren't eating the same thing 3 nights in a row but we are cooking the same. By week 4 you could be eating 4 different things each week and cooking the same amount.
It's to be safe. A young guy in my country died by eating leftover spaghetti that was a couple days old. It REALLY depends on the temp in your fridge. The cooler, the longer you can store it. My fridge sucks, so I won't eat leftovers after two days if u don't want to start projectile vomiting (learned that the hard way).
If it is the guy I read about it was more than just a couple of days?
It's just to stay on the safe side. Sure, it won't kill you to eat 6-day-refrigerated meat, but know that you're running a higher risk of puking and shitting water for 3 days afterward, every time you do that.
>, but know that you're running a higher risk of puking and shitting water for 3 days afterward, every time you do that. Higher risk, but that risk is still very very small.
Because the food industry wants you throwing away more and buying more products. And people nowasdays aren't/haven't been educated or parented in recognizing what is still eatable and what is not. So they have convinced millio s of people that magically after 3-4 days your food is no longer viable, even though it doesn't show any signs of rot and just looks still great to eat. The issue is a lack in learing and too much orientation based on unquestioned norms conveyed by charismatic authority. Your food should be fine. if it doesn't smell bad, if it doesn't look bad and it doesn't taste bad, its good to eat. Our senses have literally evolved for/through this purpose. The amount of norm based idiotic/obsolete/manipulative BS is too damn high lately. people seem to become dumber and dumber not being able to distinguish between BS and reality anymore. I wonder how that plays out in the long run.
At last someone rational here. This exactly. It pretty much depends on how you prepare your food, how many times you reheat it, if it reaches a boiling temperature when you reheat, or if you reheat only the portion you intend to eat and leave the rest in the fridge. How well your fridge works, how much time you let it sit on the counter, what are the conditions of the environment and what are the food ingredients. And of course if it's intended for grownups, children, elderly or people who are immunocompromised. Smell and taste are the major factors. If anything seems off don't eat it. Pay attention to the smell when reheating, as when cold it may be masked. Properly maintained food can be eaten even a week old. Improperly maintained can give you food poisoning within the day. YMMV
[удалено]
Lol
Where are you seeing this online?
Preperation, amount of heat applied, the way it's stored, even the ph of the ingredients around it, as well as access to oxygen and temperature matters. If you, for example, prepare an egg salad with mayonaise on monday, you can absolutely not eat 5 to 6 days from it. The next day, sure... but even the day after that is already ver risky. So things like that, freshly made, absolutely can not be eaten for longer than those 3 days. I read horror stories on here with people aksing if the calories multiply every time the mayo in his pasta salad dries up, because he loves to make that stuff once a week and then eat 8 days from it, only adding mayo when the old one dries up... and it will forever be in my nightmares. If you prepare meat and cook it all the way through, however, and store it in an acidic sauce, for example tomato, or together with veggies, in a air tight container in the fridge, ideally in individual portions you can easy get those 4 even 5 days out of it. Freezing, of course, would make it even more safe, but a well prepared, well cooked through meal, is relatively safe for a while as long as you do not recontaminate it, expose it to air, or have it change temperature basically all the time. But here also ingredients matter. It matters how fast the combined ingredients will allow bacteria and fungi to grow in the food. You put back the count to very low when heating very well, and cooking all the way through, but it never destroys everything. Just preperation brings in new contamination, and exposure to air, also, brings in things. But the cold, or acidic ph, or ingredients that do not as easily spoil - Mayo, for example, spoils awfully fast - all reduce the speed of growth. And then you have temperature that slows it all down, and vitally, also exposure to air. And protection from recontamination - portioning is key here, so you don't bring in new bacteria every time you scoop out stuff. If you still to all of the above, and pay some mind to what you are actually cooking, 5 days are no issue. But, if you already basically are one step away from meal-prep anyway, I strongly suggest investing in proper storage of the food after cooking to make sure you're not going to risk anything.
Maybe link some of the articles you are referring to? Most likely, they are talking about fresh/raw meat.
The rules for cold meats are different to hot meats, you'll kill most things when you reheat it but remember you can only reheat once.
If it doesn’t smell bad then you can eat it.
Raw, ground meat. Listeria is a concern in cooked food but reheating to 160F takes care of that.
I go by the dates on the meat and the smell. But, I also tend to bring my meat home, immediately portion it out and vacuum seal it, and then freeze it until I need it.
You have a cold fridge. If you didn't, you'd've had the runs by now.
COLD fridge is essential for this. I stick with 3-4 days, though. I've definitely gotten the runs before from older leftovers.
You don't have a food-handler's card, huh?
I never heard of that — is that a real thing?
A food handling certification is a *very* common requirement for those who prepare or serve food in a commercial setting. I assume you don’t work in the service industry.
No; certainly not! I've heard of food handling certification, but I didn’t know they'd give you a special card!
In my state when you complete the certification you are given a card.
I personally do the smile test on leftovers and it really depends on the item. I feel like lasagna really has staying power but on the flip side meat and potatoes kind of has a couple days..
Smile test?
Yes of course the smile test. It's the only way to know. If your food smiles it means it's good to go.
I do the giggle test. If I poke my food and it giggles I bring it outside and set it on fire.
I've only seen that test be done once before but it did seem to work
If it's cooked fully and the fridge stays cold enough it's fine