Avoid Eating These 4 Leftovers At All Costs! Especially The 4th One!

Food leftovers are a common sight in every household where cooking is a daily ritual. For most people, wasting food is a crime, especially in a country like India where many sleep with their stomachs empty. Leftover food can be recycled and reused, and the internet is flooded with recipes to recycle last night’s leftovers and make it look like a brand new delicacy!

But, no matter how tasty the recycled dish looks, it still isn’t fresh, isn’t it? Carrying forward the leftovers is a good service to the nation, but it might turn out to be a huge disservice to one’s health and well-being. If you are into cooking in bulk, thinking that the leftovers would help you cruise through your work week, make sure you know that you are inviting trouble into your home! Not every kind of leftover food is a great idea to eat again. In fact, watch out for these 4 foods that are the most dangerous!

1. Veggies

Vegetables are healthy, and a must-have in our daily diet. Be it in the form of a curry or soup or a filling inside your sandwich, veggies are an essential part of our daily diet. But did you know that they aren’t a safe leftover food to consume?

According to Fox News, leftover vegetable curries and soups have a shorter shelf life than their raw counterparts. Experts suggest that vegetables such as cooked broccoli must be consumed within a span of three days. But one needs to be more careful with vegetables rich in nitrates, such as cabbage and spinach, whose nitrates turn into nitrites if left overnight. These nitrites are highly carcinogenic and pose a huge threat to one’s health (1).

2. Vegetable Oil

Food cooked in vegetable oil might be more appetizing to some taste buds, but as we all know – food is a lot more than just taste. It is fuel for our body and it needs to be fresh and healthy to keep our body energetic and fit.

Studies have shown that there are alarming levels of toxins – those known to cause heart troubles as well as neurological disorders- that are formed while heating or reheating foods cooked using vegetable oil. Vegetable oils such as canola, sunflower oil, and corn oil are high in linoleic acid, which when reheated can produce a toxin called HNE (4-hydroxy-trans-2-nonenal). Hence, experts suggest that it is best to avoid heating and reheating the vegetable oil. However, if you must do it, then avoid heating it to the point of smoking (2).

3. Chicken

If you are an ardent fan of chicken, then there is something you need to know about the health hazards you could face when eating leftover chicken. Meat contains a heavy amount of proteins that are best absorbed when it is freshly cooked. But if we end up reheating the leftover chicken from last night, then it is very likely that we are altering the protein content to something that is very harmful. It is also recommended to store the raw meat (including chicken) separately from the cooked one. According to health and nutrition experts, no matter how well you cook your chicken, it must be reheated only once and consumed immediately.

4. Rice

We have come across plenty of recipes that use leftover rice. Be it lentil pancakes, flavoured rice (such as tamarind, lemon, and curd), puddings, dumplings, and a lot more – Google has a lot of ways to reuse the leftover rice from your dinner last night! But have you ever thought if leftover rice was a good thing to use? Did you know that raw or uncooked rice contains spores of the bacteria Bacillus cereus? These spores can survive the first round of cooking. And if you leave the cooked rice at room temperature, these spores multiply to produce toxins. Such rice, if consumed, may lead to food poisoning. So, think before you cook extra rice for dinner tonight!

If you are a woman who likes to cook and refrigerate for the week ahead over the weekend, or are an expert at dishing out delicacies from almost anything (including leftovers) – it’s time to stop. I am sorry, but there isn’t much to be proud of the fact that you aren’t eating fresh food every day. True, one may not always have the time or strength to cook every day, especially when one is trying to juggle both office and home. But it would be nice if you cook at least on alternate days and make sure to cook just the right amount of food to avoid having leftovers.

Cooking the right quantity of food would avoid food wastage and more frequent rounds of cooking would take care of our holistic health. Isn’t that a simple plan to make sure the nation and our body both don’t have to bear the brunt of leftovers?

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Chandrama Deshmukh

   

Creativity has no limits. And words have no barriers. Together they can create magic, bridge all gaps.I work with words. Words that sound great, words that make sense, words that sell and words that tell..

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