Many people will look at a curry or pizza in the fridge and wondered if it’s OK to still eat – BBC Morning Live viewers were given the lowdown by a Dr
Dr Xand van Tulleken said people should definitely not eat warmed up takeaways after a certain point(Image: BBC)
A BBC expert has explained exactly how long people can keep leftovers in their fridge. Dr Xand van Tulleken was appearing on BBC Morning Live and give a key answer to anyone looking at a curry, pizza or Chinese takeaway a few days later and wondering if it’s ok to still tuck in.
On a section about the dangers of fridges, Dr Xand asked the show’s guests and presenters whether they would eat the food. He said: “Talk about you’ve ordered a takeaway. It’s been in the fridge for a couple of days. Only a couple of days. Looks fine, smells fine. Would you eat it?”
Most said yes and he revealed the deadline – or face potentially food poisoning. He said: “Two days is max for leftovers. Okay. So, I would say at the end of two days, I would be saying ditch it.”
Host Helen Skelton added: “Chinese is better the day after isn’t it?” Dr Xand said one risk was forgetting when you ordered it: “It’s easy to forget. We think, ‘Oh, well, it’s only Wednesday. We had that on the weekend.’” Some people think the ‘sniff test’ is enough to ensure that milk is OK, even beyond the use by date.
However, Dr Xand had a different view: “Milk is the milk is the next one. It’s 2 days past the use by date. It smells fine. Absolutely fine. We’ve all had experience of this, but the thing that you’ve got to be careful of is that milk can grow bugs that do not smell. And so again, I would say ditch it a couple of days afterwards.
On the issues with cutting the mouldy bits of cheese off he said: “Hard cheese like cheddar, you can trim off the mould if you give a wide margin, but soft cheese can be dangerous. So, I would err on the side of caution. Hard cheese, yes, soft cheese, no.
“Don’t get poorly. You don’t want to get poorly. And that’s particularly true if you’re pregnant. The listeria bugs and soft cheese, even if they don’t make you ill, they can make your baby very ill.”
He explained in the UK, unlike America, people don’t need to keep their eggs in the fridge as hens are vaccinated against salmonella. He added: “The key thing here is the meat shelf. So, the meat shelf is lower down in the fridge and it’s cold. The meat is where the danger lurks in your fridge because the bugs that grow on meat are much more dangerous than the bugs that grow pretty much on anything else.
“So, if you’re getting food poisoning, it is very most commonly related to chicken is the most dangerous, but meat, fish, shellfish, that’s where the bugs can really get you. So, you want to keep those as cold as possible”
For people who defrost their food outside the fridge he said: “This is completely incorrect and you should disregard it entirely. My mother, Anna Haugh [chef], and I And all sensible people would agree that the best way to defrost food is in the fridge by a very very long way.
“The outside may be room temperature even though the inside is frozen and food at room temperature just has bugs growing all over it. If you leave out your plate of ham and cheese at the end of a party, if you leave stuff on a counter, you know, it will be covered in bugs. So do not do this. Now, you have to be organised. I really struggle with this because it takes a long time to defrost something in a cold fridge. But that’s what you got to do. It’s the only safe thing to do.”
