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Comment by User23 | Hacker News Reader

Meanwhile when I grew up we’d cover cooked leftovers, including meat, leave it out, and eat it the next day. I never got food poisoning.

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Sounds risky to me.

I’ve never needed a seat belt or bike helmet, but I still use both.

Doesn’t that prove the opposite though? One in a million+ meals might make you sick, that’s not risky

If that meal makes you deadly sick, yeah it's risky.

CDC estimates 48 million cases of foodborne illness per year in the US [0]. That works out to something like 1 case in 10,000 meals.

Maintaining proper temperature of cooked food is part of basic food safety. Right up there with having people that prepare food wash their hands. Basic food safety.

So no, a random anecdote does not prove the opposite. I don’t want to be snarky, but I can’t believe people are implying that basic food safety guidelines are disproven.

Edit to add: from the same CDC link, 128,000 people in the US are hospitalized from food borne illness and 3,000 die. I’m fine with someone choosing to ignore this for their own food. But please don’t make it sound like there’s no risk.

[0] https://www.cdc.gov/foodsafety/food-poisoning.html

Idk the risk is not remotely the same between two people.

I’ve drank the tap water in India, eaten fish that’s just been sitting in a pan on my stovetop for a day, cooked and eaten expired slimy chicken (admittedly more than a few times), among many other transgressions, and I’ve never felt sick.

Whatever few organisms and their toxins that may grow if I leave leftovers out an hour too long has so far been easy mode for whatever acid bath flows through my body so I’m not going to throw away food needlessly.

(P.S. If I cook for someone else, I have much more stringent food safety standards. Also despite my transgressions, I do usually cook non-expired high quality food.)

Do you live in a cool climate, or maybe always had air conditioning? Some things will definitely go off if you leave them unrefrigerated for a day in a hot climate.

A cooked dish was sterilized. It won’t go bad for a day or three, depending on how often it is opened. Before refrigeration this was very common.

Works great as long as you aren't in a hot climate. Out of curiosity I checked and I'm currently measuring 14 degrees C in my room. Haven't turned on the refrigerator since October.

In most south east asian household (Malaysia specifically since I lived there), they will leave the cooked leftover on the table below a fly protecting net and eat it up to the next day.

This is in hot humid weather.

Yeah, especially roast lamb / beef. You can easily leave those out probably a couple days and it'll be perfectly fine so long as it's covered away from insects and the cat / dog

Although perhaps in warmer climates it might be an issue.

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