Last night’s dinner can be a lifeline when you need a hot lunch, but you may want to think twice before reheating some foods. Not all foods are good the second time around, with some turning from safe to dangerous overnight. Take a look at the most common dishes that could make you sick if you try to reheat them.
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| Eggs almost always contain salmonella, and leaving them at room temperature for any length of time is a recipe for bacteria to multiply. The methods commonly used to reheat eggs use gentle heat for a short duration of time, which doesn’t kill the bacteria. Plus, eggs always taste better fresh and don’t take any time at all to scramble. |
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| While beets can give you an energy boost and lower your blood pressure, the nitric oxide in them can get converted to nitrites when heated, and then to nitrosamines, some of which are known to be carcinogenic. Regularly eating reheated beets may up your risk for certain cancers. |
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| Spuds seem so study, but even though they’re cooked hotter and longer than eggs, they suffer a similar fate when left to cool at room temperature. Particularly at risk are large, foil-wrapped baked potatoes, which offer the bacteria Clostridium botulinum the ideal environment to thrive in. Zapping them for 30-60 seconds can’t kill the stuff that wreak havoc on your GI system. Cooking a raw potato in the microwave only takes a few minutes more, so don’t try to heat up potatoes. |
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| Like beets, spinach is another nitrate-rich food that’s often served cooked. To avoid converting nitrates in these leafy greens into potentially carcinogenic nitrosamines, you may want to serve your spinach raw |
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| In the 1970s, a number of food poisoning outbreaks associated with fried rice from Chinese restaurants led to increased awareness that rice harbors a microorganism called Bacillus cereus that multiplies at room temperature. That doesn’t mean you have to chuck all your uneaten takeout though — just make sure you’re stashing it in the refrigerator quickly. |
