I wonder if this is an US/the rest thing or maybe a meat eater / vegetarian thing. For exact scientific evaluation, please tell in which groups you fit in when commenting.
When the topic food is brought up here or there is always this guy saying "omg you can't leave your food for 30 minutes on the counter because bacteria you know" (exaggerated) and I don't get where that sentiment comes from. Many people agree and say you will get food poisoning from that.
First of all, let me tell you I am not an idiot (at least I hope so) and I know how microbiology works - bacteria is everywhere. I don't doubt your food on the counter will get populated by bacteria, probably more than it would be in the fridge. The question is, is this bad for you?
Now, where I live (central Europe) people are not so fast with that and I wonder why this is. We have a temperate climate which could play a role, so a large portion of the year the temperature is pretty moderate, compared to let's say south US. But apart from that I don't really know.
I am a vegetarian, mostly vegan. I am pretty sure it's not a good idea to leave animal parts out of the fridge, as they are already populated with bad bacteria when you buy them. But for vegetables? Pasta, soup, lasagna? To be honest, I have no shame to leave that stuff on the counter the whole day and even take a spoon from time to time without reheating. Over night I put it of course in the fridge, and in summer when we have 35°C it's also a different thing. But in general I don't really care. I know I cannot extrapolate on humanity, only because ai never felt bad after doing this. But honestly, am I an idiot? Or are you just a bit sensitive? Do you assume everybody eats meats?
Really interested in your ideas. Don't forget to tell the region you are coming from and your diet preferences.
Thank you so much my respected lemmings and pie people
The ignorance in here of how food can go bad is impressive. Refrigerate within one hour. You don’t need to let it cool down before putting it into the refrigerator.
https://www.cdc.gov/food-safety/prevention/index.html
Here's the thing, restaurant level food safety is there to prevent 1 in a million chances of something happening, and usually would only effect those with weak immune systems. It's a huge overabundance of caution born out of a desire to avoid lawsuits, and if you are serving to the public, you should 100% follow it.
But at home? Personally, I think 1 in a million is overly cautious. I'm fine with 1 in 10,000 and trust my immune system to handle it. I am too poor to throw away perfectly good food because I got lazy after dinner and waited 3 hours to put it away instead of 2. I survived all of college off of pizza that was left at room temperature. And yea, you can cite that one case of the guy who got botulism or something after eating a 3-4 day old pizza, but I want you to think about the millions upon millions of pizzas people eat every day without following restaurant-level food safety and realize how crazy it is to base your entire personal food safety philosophy around avoiding extreme edge cases.
Eat day old pizza, thaw your chicken in the sink, store your food in large containers if it makes more sense than small ones. I promise, you will be fine. You are far more at risk driving to the grocery store to get your ingredients than you are from eating food that's been at room temperature for a few hours.
That’s not guidance for restaurants. Anecdotal evidence isn’t fact.
Anecdotal evidence is evidence though. And I think the point of the above post is valid, commercial food service should be held to the strictest guidelines to eliminate as much risk as possible. At home, for myself, I'm not going to worry about it beyond basic common sense and trusting my own senses. I also think it is good to be aware of guidelines and generally exercise caution.
All that said, I am always forgetting to put food away and eat it for lunch the next day anyway - have never had a problem in decades (vegetarian).