Dietitian issues warning about the foods you should never reheat to avoid deadly bacteria

If you’ve never had a good reheated leftover lunch the morning after a night out, you’re a rarity.

It’s magic.

You’re hanging, with a dry mouth that feels like it could turn to dust and as you slowly crawl into the kitchen like that freaky creature from Creep, there you see it.

Your Chinese containers from last night strewn about the counter.

Perhaps there’s something you’ve remembered to pop in the fridge?

Correct.

You’ve only gone and left your chow mein and a bit of egg fried rice in the fridge and after a few minutes of agony, waiting by the microwave… it’s done.

Oh, how leftovers can heal the world… or perhaps not.

Apparently, there’s a lot of things you can’t nom on if it’s been cooked before.

Sorry to pop your bubble on a Saturday, where you’re probably looking through your takeaway boxes right now, but it could be deadly to reheat some of these things.

According to a diet expert, the risks of reheating your chow could lead to damage to your kidneys, getting E. coli or listeria.

Dietitian Harini Bala shared on TikTok the three foods you absolutely love but need to steer clear of popping back in the microwave or oven.

Spinach

First up is spinach.

Now, Bala explains that this is down to it containing a substance called oxalic acid, which is fine for you to eat when it’s raw, but if you reheat it, he oxalic acid 'crystallises' and then becomes 'toxic'.

If you eat a lot of reheated spinach and take in the oxalic acid in high doses, it can increase your risk of kidney stones.

She added: “It also contains nitrates and this will get converted into nitrites when it is reheated and these are toxic.”

Nitrites combining with chemicals in the gut could increase the risk of bowel tumours.

You could even get listeria from not eating spinach properly, which can cause a fever, flu-symptoms, headache, or even seizures.

Tea

Next on the list is tea.

So, it’s not a food but there’s so many people who reheat their tea.

According to Bala, if you reheat it, 'any kind of dormant bacteria can become active in it’.

Lastly… it’s the obvious one.

Rice

Rice.

According to the expert, cooked rice a contain Bacillus cereus when it cools down, which is a bacteria typically found in vegetables and the spores are heat resistant.

So, when you heat it up, you’re not killing the risk of being ill from the bacteria.

Bacillus cereus can make you pretty sick, and it can make you experience vomiting, diarrhoea and tummy cramps.

To mitigate these risks, Bala said you can do a few things.

She said: “It can be reheated if you're storing it within two hours [after cooking it] in the fridge in an airtight container.

“But if you're cooking your rice in the morning [leaving it out] and storing it in the fridge at night to eat the next day, there is a huge possibility of Bacillus cereus forming.”

Bacillus cereus illnesses is also known as the ‘fried rice syndrome’.

An instance of someone dying from Bacillus cereus, is when a man from Belgium died after reheating pasta which had been left out for days.

An autopsy later found that AJ had moderate centrilobular liver necrosis, which likely caused his organs to shut down.

The report said: "The spaghetti had been kept at room temperature for several days.

"This allowed Bacillus cereus to grow to very high concentrations and produced the high toxin concentration (14.8 μg/g) found in the pasta and which is likely responsible for the fatal outcome."

AJ died 16 years ago but his story has been posted on TikTok and Reddit to warn others about 'fried rice syndrome.'

This refers to food poisoning caused by eating reheated foods which haven't been stored correctly, including rice, pasta and potatoes.