Posted on 02/25/2018 6:48:42 PM PST by nickcarraway
Day-old pizza is God's gift to college students, starving artists and anyone who thought it was a brilliant idea to order that extra-large double-meat at 2 a.m. after coming home from the bar, only to go sleepy-peepy halfway through the first slice.
But while cold pizza is a bona fide breakfast of champions, what about room-temperature pizza? Will you get sick if you throw down a few slices of the pepperoni that sat in a greasy cardboard box next to your bed for the last eight hours?
The official answer — don't risk it. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) published some food safety guidelines for students in which it answered this very question. According to the USDA, you should throw away any leftover food that's been sitting out at room temperature for two hours or more, whether or not it contains meat.
The reason is that bad bacteria grow the fastest on foods that are in the "danger zone," temperatures between 40 degrees Fahrenheit and 140 degrees Fahrenheit (4.4 degrees Celsius to 60 Celsius). The bacteria actually double in number every 20 minutes.
Does that mean that every pizza is contaminated with pathogenic bacteria that will explode in number if the pie is left out for more than two hours? Absolutely not. Benjamin Chapman, a food safety specialist at North Carolina State University, told Lifehacker that leftover pizza hasn't made enough people sick to count as a public health risk.
Chapman says it's probably because pizza toppings and crust are generally too dry to be bacteria-friendly environments and that tomato sauce is too acidic. Not all toppings are created equal, though. Pepperoni is dry cured, so it's built to last. But eating old veggie ingredients or moist chunks of chicken is probably pressing your luck.
To get a sense of the general risk level of pizza, check out this public health report from Ontario, Canada. According to a review of global food poisoning databases, pizza has been implicated in a number of foodborne illness outbreaks worldwide, and that includes pizzas of all types (plain cheese, meat, veggie) in both restaurants and in homes.
For some perspective though, that report cited a few hundred individual cases of food poisoning over more than a decade of worldwide pizza-eating. In the U.S. alone, we eat an estimated 3 billion pizzas every year.
So should you finish off those last two pieces of stuffed-crust Hawaiian from last night's poker game? The odds of getting sick are probably similar to the odds of drawing a royal flush. So the real question is, are you feeling lucky?
I regularly used to eat left-out-overnight Ledo’s Pizza. But I can’t speak for lesser fare.
In the Summer of 1965, I joined the Summer Staff of a large (over 400 Summer Staffers) retreat in Western, N.C. After a few days the entire staff, at least those who ate the chicken and rice, came down with food poisoning.
I woke up around midnight with my insides hurting. My room-mate asked if I had it too. I spent maybe two hours of pure misery and don’t intend to go through that ever again while I live.
The staff Dr and his nurse were passing out paregoric in paper cups from gallon jugs. After maybe an hour, it took effect and I was alright.
Every so often the chow halls there would have a food poisoning day just to keep people on their toes.
Yep.
People live aseptic lives and then wonder why they get sick.
Nuke it and eat it, I don’t need government advice.
I’m sick of the nanny state ‘experts’ from those that have to justify needing more money, more studies all the time.
Get it good and hot but, don’t eat it if it smells funny.
Just eating food not made in your own kitchen, under your own control, is probably quite risky enough already.
A little explosive diarrhea never killed anyone.
...okay, maybe it’s killed a few people, but what are the odds?
That’s how it got the name...Dire rear!
MREs
Meals Rejected by the Enemies!
My theory is us bachelors have a robust immune system.
My brother ex wife was so anal she would through out the pickles if they were 2 weeks old lol
Do people not know about microwaves?
The Pork Chow Mein was good, but the PC idiots took it away LOL
Hint: FIRE makes all MREs better
I just finished Norman Schwartzkopf’s autobiography. He hated MREs and called them, Meals rejected by Ethiopians.
I probably got the best deal on MREs ever a few years back. It was at a gun show and bought 30 cases of 12 meals for $35. This was at a gun show and I think the guy just wanted to quit carrying them around in the back of his camper.
Oddly enough, I liked them. I guess eating them only every now and then makes a difference.
Yes, I could not imagine eating them cold.
How you doing? I never see’s ya.
WI? If yes, every winter converts your back porch into a room sized refrigerator/freezer.
Every troop has a one ring gas burner LOL and a coffee pot
I would avoid the leftover raw oyster or steak tartar pizza.
They usually drown themselves in hand sanitizer as well.
Had a room mate who threw out my apple cider vinegar because it was expired.
You eat microwaved pizza?
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