How long do leftovers last? And other food safety questions, answered
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All right, I've got a scenario for you. You just got home. It's dinner time. Your hunger started creeping up an hour ago and now it's entering hanger territory and you're still not sure what you're going to make for dinner. You open the fridge and oh, right. There's that lasagna I made the other day. When did I make that lasagna? Was it Monday? Tuesday? Probably still good, right? You open the Tupperware. Smells okay. It's probably safe to eat.

Francine Shaw is a food safety expert, and she's going to burst our bubble here a little bit. You cannot see or smell some of these bacteria or taste all the bacteria that's going to make you sick or kill you. Francine runs a food safety company, wrote a food safety book, and co-hosts a food safety podcast called, are you ready for this? Don't Eat Poop.

And she's not kidding around with that title. You can't wash your hands enough. I mean, that is the number one cause of foodborne illness. Norovirus is the leading cause of disease from contaminated foods in the United States, according to the CDC. And yes, it's spread through the stool and vomit particles of infected people. And those often get around from people touching contaminated surfaces. Wash your hands, everybody.

And look, nobody wants to get food poisoning and spend the night throwing up or sitting on the toilet or curled up in the fetal position because of cramps. Also, that's not actually the worst case scenario. Some people have lifelong ramifications from foodborne illnesses. They never fully recover. The FDA reports that an estimated one in six Americans get sick, 128,000 are hospitalized and 3,000 die every year from foodborne illnesses.

So the problem of foodborne disease is a real one. But there's also a lot you can do to protect yourself. We can all take steps to minimize the risk of foodborne illness at home, at picnics, at social gatherings.

And a lot of it is just things that we should do every day. On this episode of Life Kit, reporter Andy Tegel will walk you through the must-knows of food safety. She's going to help us as we head into the holiday season to keep our gatherings as safe as possible, to learn the ins and outs of kitchen and food prep, and also how to store your leftovers safely. ♪

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Hi, I'm Katherine Marr, CEO of NPR, where we're guided by a bold mission to create a more informed public. Join us today by giving at donate.npr.org. All right. If you're anything like me, you've come to this story with the same burning question. Is the five second rule real? If I drop a pretzel on the floor, but I pick it right back up again.

No bacteria, right? We're good? It's not, you know, you drop something and then there are bacteria waiting and they sprint over and it takes them five seconds to get there. Nemanji Bumpus is the principal deputy commissioner at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. And before this gig, she was their chief scientist.

Which is just to say, as much as it pains me to let go of the fantasy, she really knows what she's talking about when she says, I would say there's no five-second rule. And that's one reason why we say, for instance, for surfaces where you'll be preparing food, to make sure that before you do any prep, you're washing really well. Because bacteria, dirt and dust and all types of things that we don't want on our food, it's about the contact itself. And this brings us to takeaway one, clean food.

The first step to food safety and avoiding foodborne illness, you need clean food handlers, a clean workspace, and clean food. I know that's an obvious idea, but there's actually a lot of small stuff that falls under this umbrella that might be falling to the wayside in your kitchen. So before we get our hands dirty, strictly metaphorically speaking, of course, I just want to quickly preface this by saying we're going to be throwing lots of advice at you.

All of it is backed by scientific research, but you might find some bits feel harder to achieve or less realistic for everyday life. Here's Francie. Don't be scared. The average person can withstand a fair amount of bacteria and still be in good shape. But you have people that are in high-risk populations. So while one person may be fine, another person may not be. If anyone at home is very young or very old, pregnant or immunocompromised,

you should know they may be at higher risk for severe illness from food poisoning. How that information changes your approach to food safety is up to you. Just like with all the tips offered here, only you can decide what to follow and what level of risk you're willing to accept in your home. All right, back to cleaning. We're going to break this takeaway down into three squeaky clean sections for you. Section one, best practices for food handlers.

Now, we all know you should wash your hands with soap and water for at least 20 seconds before and after working with food. Do you pay much attention to your nails? I always tell people that I could harbor enough bacteria under my nails to kill a small country. There's also the rest of your hands to think about.

Specifically, if you have any cuts or scrapes, make sure to cover those up before touching any food or surfaces. And then there's that item that may feel like an appendage for a lot of us. You know, I too use my cell phone for recipes or you might use it as your timer. You know, you call someone while you're cooking, trying to remember when you touch your phone to go back, wash your hands under warm, soapy water for at least 20 seconds. It really can help ensure safety. Another thing that will help keep you safe?

Keeping your pets out of the kitchen. As adorable as Stella looks in that little chef's hat, Francine says, really not a good idea. We know that our cats get in the cat litter and then they are walking on the counter. That's just the bacteria that can be there is just insane. Which brings us to cleaning section two, your workspace. The first thing you want to do is clear those kitchen countertops of any potentially germy non-cooking items.

I'm looking at you, giant pile of junk mail. It's time to go. Then clean them thoroughly before you start cooking. Just plain soap and hot water is your best bet, along with either a brand new or very fresh sponge, if you must. But Francine's really not a fan of those because of how well they can harbor bacteria. Or a clean dishcloth. She advises tossing them in the laundry pile after every use. Or...

People are not going to like this because it's not green, but I use a lot of paper towels when I'm wiping off the counters. Now, what about everything else you'll be cooking with? Utensils, dishes, cutting boards? Nemanji says, yep, you want to give them all a wash before you cook, even if they were just sitting clean in the cupboard. The reasoning from the FDA here is you just can't ever know for sure what's on that surface.

Like, maybe there was a critter crawling through your drawers last night, or some buildup left over from the dishwasher. If, I don't know, someone opened the drawer and touched it but hadn't washed their hands right before, I mean, cleaning it before and after can help ensure that you've got a clean surface before your food interacts with it. And with that, we've made it to Cleaning Section 3, Food. First on the list, Fruits and Vegetables.

The rule is as basic as it gets. Wash all fresh produce before eating it. Even if you're going to peel them, because if you don't and they're contaminated, you're transferring the bacteria from the skin to, I'm going to say, the meat of the vegetable, for lack of a better term right now. Yes, that includes things like bananas, avocados, oranges, as well as any pre-packaged fruits or vegetables. The only exception is if the package specifically says triple washed or ready to eat.

Now, washing produce is super simple. Rinse your fruits and vegetables under cool running tap water for at least 20 seconds. That's it. It might not sound like much, but that running water can rid a piece of produce of up to 99% of the microorganisms living on it.

Now, what about your meats, seafood, and poultry? Do not wash your poultry. Any meat, it doesn't need to be washed. You're going to cook it. Oh, well, that was easy. This one might feel really strange if you were brought up with any other practice. I was.

But the FDA and CDC agree. If you try to wash your meat, you might actually be doing more harm than good. All the bacteria that's in the outside of this meat is being splashed all over your kitchen, on yourself, on your person, on your countertops, on any other food products that you might have sitting around. Okay, with that cleared up, we've got everything nice and clean, it's time to get organized. Takeaway two, separate. One major cause of foodborne illness is cross-contamination.

According to the CDC, that's when juices from uncooked foods come in contact with safely cooked foods or with other raw foods that don't need to be cooked, like fruits and vegetables. So let's say you go to the grocery store and buy some chicken cutlets and your package is contaminated with salmonella. This isn't actually that rare a scenario, by the way. The CDC estimates one in about every 25 packages of chicken at the grocery store is contaminated with this stuff.

If those cutlets were then to drip on your bundle of fresh romaine lettuce, even if you wash that lettuce thoroughly, you could be setting yourself up for a world of hurt. So easy fix here, just keep all the raw things apart.

Separating raw meat, poultry, seafood and eggs from other foods in your grocery shopping cart, in your grocery bags and in your refrigerator. This requires just a little bit of advanced planning if you're, say, someone who uses reusable bags at the grocery store. Or if you don't, just being extra careful to always put that entire thing of ground beef in one of those tearaway baggies and sealing it up before putting it in your cart.

This should also help with storing your food when you get home. But let's note here, you don't have to blindly follow the labels on your fridge. You've got your lettuce and your vegetable crispers are in the bottom of the refrigerator. This is something that really bothers me with the way our refrigerators are designed. You should have raw meat and sealed containers on the bottom shelf of your refrigerator, always. If the juices from the raw meat drip on your produce...

it's going to contaminate that raw produce, which is considered ready to eat. Observe the separation rule when you're preparing food, too.

One easy, increasingly popular, and therefore pretty price-effective way to do this, color-coded cutting boards. You know, always use the green for the produce, maybe, and always use the red for maybe beef and yellow for poultry, whatever you select that helps you remember. Ideal for minimizing cross-contamination. You might also choose a specific cutting board if you have anyone in your home with food allergies to help avoid the risk of cross-contact. For

For example, if the same knife used to spread peanut butter is then used to spread jelly. Which is why utensils are another thing you want to keep separate. Just as important as keeping those forks and knives clean, you want to avoid using the same utensils for raw foods and cooked foods. So if you use one fork to throw burgers on the grill, use a different one to take them off. Because remember, raw food juices and the bacteria within them are enemy number one. And after cleaning and separating, heat is going to be your best tool against them.

Which brings us to takeaway three: Cook. Okay, be honest now. How often do you throw some fish in a pan and then maybe flip it over a few times, smush it a bit with a spatula, briefly eye your dish, and then say to yourself, "That seems about right."

Nemanji says this is something she sees a lot in people's cooking practices. Color and texture of meat being an indicator of when it's done, but actually you want to use a food thermometer. And that's really the only way to ensure safety of meat, poultry and seafood and egg products. This might sound like a bit of a pain, but making sure your food reaches a safe internal temperature is really important.

Every dish, be it soy, seafood, or leftover casserole, has a different temperature it needs to hit, and in some cases, a certain rest time, in order to be considered safe. When they don't, they can contain harmful levels of disease-causing bacteria. Now, I'm not going to spend any time here spelling out which items need what temperatures, because there's a lot of them, but there is an easy-to-reach chart for this that you can and definitely should look up on foodsafety.gov. Then you can save it on your phone or tape it to your fridge.

What I am going to do for you is quickly but fervently implore you to dig through your kitchen junk drawer. Because everybody should have a food thermometer and everybody should know how to calibrate them. Seriously, this simple little tool can mean the difference between a lovely date night at home versus one spent up all night in the bathroom or even in the emergency room. But in order to actually be helpful, Francine says they need to be calibrated every few months or so.

To do that, you can try something called the ice water method. Essentially, just fill up a cup with ice and a little bit of water, then plunge your thermometer in without letting it touch the bottom or sides for 30 seconds or until your reading stays steady at 32 degrees Fahrenheit. Ensuring you've cooked your food safely in this way will also make it that much easier to eat your leftovers with confidence. I know I'm not the only one that eyes my Tupperware with skepticism like all the time, right? Right? So let's talk about reheating food.

According to the FDA, leftovers will hold in the fridge for three or four days, regardless of the food, as long as they're cooked properly. But wait, there's more. Some people think that you can only reheat a leftover once. And actually, that's not the case. After each time you reheat them, they'll keep in the fridge for another three to four days. Did you catch that?

As long as you're safely reheating your food, and for leftovers, that's 165 degrees Fahrenheit, the clock starts over every time. But what you may find, though, is that after each reheating, you can imagine the food quality is reduced. You may find that it tastes different, the texture's different. So the best thing would be

to take out the portion that you plan to eat and just reheat that portion. And also, certainly leftovers that won't be used within four days can be frozen and will keep indefinitely under that condition. That's right, indefinitely. But more on frozen foods shortly.

A few other quick things to keep in mind here. Soups, sauces, and gravy should be brought to a boil when reheating. And if you're using a microwave, it's important to make sure your food is being cooked evenly. So making sure that the food is getting rotated. You may have a microwave that does its own rotating. If not, you can rotate it manually once or twice during the cooking. Our last takeaway, takeaway four, is chill. I warn you, this next portion of our food safety offering might be hard to swallow.

Because when it comes to refrigerating perishable foods, the FDA has a clear-cut guideline. "Don't ever let anything set out at room temperature for more than two hours." "And if it's hot outside, over 90 degrees Fahrenheit, you actually want to refrigerate within one hour." Are you thinking what I was thinking here? Dinner parties, playdates, company picnics, tailgates, family gatherings — any manner of social function with plastic cups or a cheese board lasts longer than two hours.

Do we really need to be that strict about timing our spreads? Yes, that's a hard and fast for me. That's non-negotiable. Yikes. The thing is, there are just a lot of risk factors when leaving food out for more than a few hours. A lot of potentially germy hands touching the same food for one, the risk of cross-contamination or cross-contact from different utensils for another, and then there are temperature concerns.

So what's the fix? One thing that I try to do when I'm hosting is rotate things ideally so if it's something that's not going to be eaten right away, it can be refrigerated. When serving food, remember simply, hot food needs to stay hot and cold food needs to stay cold. That's why when you go to buffet restaurants, for example, you'll see things like heat lamps at the carving station or big hunks of ice at the salad bar.

Because the spot you're really trying to avoid with this two-hour rule is something called the temperature danger zone. This is a real scientific term, by the way, that refers to the range of temperatures where bacteria tends to grow most rapidly. When you're in that 40 degree Fahrenheit to 140 degree Fahrenheit range, I mean, they can double in as little as 20 minutes. 70 to 125 degrees.

is the worst part of that zone because I used to call that the pathogen party zone because that's where bacteria really grows and multiplies quickly. To keep your leftovers from partying with microscopic bullies like E. coli or Listeria, you want them to cool as quickly as possible. To do that, don't just reach for the first container that'll fit the whole turkey carcass. If you have a large portion of

You want to divide it into smaller containers before refrigerating. For example, Francine told me about a time she made a big kettle of chicken corn soup for a family party. She put the leftovers in the fridge, but... A couple hours later, I went to put it into even smaller containers, and as soon as I stuck the spoon down into it, it was rancid because the outside had cooled down, but the core was still very hot.

and it had already started to spoil. So your best bet? Aim for small and shallow containers when you refrigerate. Like a couple inches high, flat, those types of containers at home would be ideal to try to cool things quicker. Getting your food to 40 degrees Fahrenheit or cooler as quickly as possible will help slow the growth of bacteria and help keep that food stable until it's time for seconds. And that brings us to thawing frozen foods.

To properly thaw something, you have three options. In a microwave, in a refrigerator, in cold water. To bypass that danger zone, you need to either get it hot quickly or keep it cold. No in between. You absolutely don't just want to leave something out to sweat on your kitchen countertop. Whichever you choose, once a food is thawed, likewise you need to either cook or refreeze it immediately.

The cool thing about freezing foods? With very few exceptions, according to the USDA, it keeps food safe, if not high quality, almost indefinitely.

The same can't be said about refrigerated foods, though. So let's talk about best practices there. Starting with temperature. Making sure that your refrigerator is consistently at a temperature of 40 degrees Fahrenheit or below, or that your freezer is zero degrees Fahrenheit or below. FYI, this is also what you want to shoot for with cooler bags or lunch boxes carrying perishables. Just something to keep in mind the next time you're packing for that faraway picnic or sending off that thermos of milk for your little one. Proper placement of food items in your fridge is important, too.

Earlier, we talked about the importance of placing your meats, poultry, and seafood at the bottom of the fridge to avoid any juices potentially dripping down on any other items. Now, let's think a little about front to back, starting with the door. Francine says this is always going to be the warmest part of the refrigerator, which is why she's always puzzled when she finds a milk drawer there. Do you know how many times a day you open and close your refrigerator door? Don't put your milk in the door. Every time you do that, you're exposing that milk.

to a warmer air temperature. This is also a popular place for loose eggs, but for the same reason, they should stay in their carton. Instead, your fridge door should be for non-perishable items that you'd prefer to keep cold, like sodas or bottles of water.

Highly perishable foods should be pushed to the back. Other best storage practices? Always keep food covered to avoid potential cross-incamination. Use ready-to-eat food like lunch meat as soon as possible to avoid bacteria growth. Don't overload your fridge or freezer. You want enough room for air to be able to circulate around the food. And finally, don't be confused by expiration, use-by, and best-by dates. While expiration dates are hard and fast—throw something out once it's expired—use-by and sell-by dates—

Those are more of a guideline. Those are more for nutrition and freshness than anything else. You can still use it. Use-by dates are not safety dates. They reflect the maker's best estimate of how long the product will remain at best quality. So if something in your fridge or pantry is past its sell-by date, you're going to want to check for signs of spoilage.

discoloration, an unpleasant odor, or changes in texture. But if it's holding up, there's no need to immediately chuck it in the bin. So we're thinking about food waste and kind of the scale of that. We, like other federal agencies, do not recommend discarding edible food just because its use-by date has passed. So go on. Break into those chocolates from last Valentine's Day. You won't find any judgment here.

All right, that was quite a full dinner plate of information. Maybe you're feeling a bit daunted by it all. Nemanja gets that. Here's what she'll leave you with. We and others work really hard to, you know, ensure that food is safe and to make sure that there's information out there for the public. So I think that there's comfort in that, that there's science behind all of this. And if you follow these things, I think that you can have confidence in food being safe.

All right, everybody, let's recap. Takeaway one, clean yourself, your cooking surfaces and utensils, your fruits and vegetables, but never your meats and poultry. Takeaway two, separate. Cross-contamination can lead to all sorts of foodborne illness. So keep meat, poultry, seafood, and eggs apart from other foods, starting in your grocery cart and continuing to your kitchen. Takeaway three, cook.

Find, calibrate, and use your food thermometer to cook foods to their designated safe internal temperatures. When it comes to reheating food, remember, leftovers will keep for three to four days in the fridge. Takeaway four, chill. Refrigerate cooked and perishable food within two hours or within one hour if you're in warmer than 90 degree temperatures to avoid the bacteria danger zone. Keep hot foods hot and cold foods cold.

That was Life Kit reporter Andy Tegel. For more Life Kit, check out our other episodes. We have one on how to meal prep and another on how to get stains out of your clothing. You know, if you spill some of that delicious food on it. You can find those at npr.org slash life kit. And if you love Life Kit and want more, subscribe to our newsletter at npr.org slash life kit newsletter. Also, we love hearing from you. So if you have episode ideas or feedback you want to share, email us please at life kit at npr.org.

This episode of Life Kit was produced by Sylvie Douglas. It was edited by Jessica Young. Our visuals editor is Beck Harlan, and our digital editor is Malika Gharib. Megan Cain is our supervising editor, and Beth Donovan is our executive producer. Our production team also includes Claire Marie Schneider and Margaret Serino. Engineering support comes from David Greenberg. I'm Mariel Seguera. Thanks for listening.

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