It’s a pretty common practice to reheat leftovers. Generally, there isn’t anything wrong with it.
In fact, being able to save our leftovers saves us valuable time and convenience on those nights where we don’t want to order in but we still want something healthy. It’s even easier with microwaves.
But some foods are just a bad idea to reheat. Not just because they don’t taste as good, but because they could actually be dangerous.
- Mushrooms. They’re a dangerous food anyway. Mushrooms should be eaten right after you prepare them. Leaving them out for any period afterwards lets their proteins deteriorate, which could cause food poisoning.
- Eggs. Reheating boiled or scrambled eggs could be toxic at worst and wreck your GI tract at best.
- Potatoes. Potatoes could be fine to reheat if you refrigerate them right away. But if left to cool down to room temperature before refrigerating, it could spur the growth of botulism, which you can’t kill with a simple microwave zap.
- Chicken. Reheating meat is always a gamble, but with chicken, the protein composition changes when you refrigerate and reheat. So if you’re reheating this one, make sure it’s fully cooked, all the way to the inside.
- Spinach, celery, and beets. The nitrates in these veggies can turn toxic when reheated. And they’re perfectly fine cold, so just take them out before you reheat.
- Rice. This one is tricky. A statement from the Food Standards Agency says “Uncooked rice can contain spores of bacteria that can cause food poisoning. When rice is cooked, the spores can survive…The, if the rice is left standing at room temperature, the spores will multiply and may produce poisons that cause vomiting or diarrhea. Reheating the rice won’t get rid of these poisons.” Yikes.
