No leftovers should survive in your fridge for longer than that. Some foods should be even be thrown away before the 7 day mark. Refer to expiration dates and food safety guidelines to know how to handle specific foods. The chart below from Foodsafety. If you want your leftovers to last longer, freeze them. Just be sure to keep track of how long you had it in the fridge before you put it in the freezer. If you've ever eaten questionably old leftovers and been totally fine, then you should consider yourself lucky.
Whether or not you got sick after eating very old food has nothing to do with your "iron stomach" and everything to do with whether or not that food contained bacteria that could cause a foodborne illness, Worobo says. As for the types of pathogens that might be on your food, he says that salmonella, E. Worobo explains that the amount of microorganisms that will get you sick varies dramatically—for example, norovirus requires one to 10 microorganisms whereas it can take over , to get infected with salmonella.
So how can you know if your week-old pizza has dangerous bacteria on it or not? You can't, because the pathogens that might get you sick aren't visible to the naked eye, Worobo says. Old food could be dangerous to eat even if it looks totally fine, which is why it's better to use time as a frame of reference if you don't want to take the risk, he says.
He says that the risk of getting sick from leftovers is actually pretty small, provided you use proper food handling practices more on that in a bit. If there are no dangerous pathogens on your food, there never will be, unless they are introduced at some point. One exception to this rule is seafood, says Philip Tierno, Ph.
If you're wondering why it seems like cooked leftovers don't last as long in your fridge as the raw ingredients do, it's because they don't, says Worobo. Bacteria develops more quickly in cooked food for a handful of reasons. Here are a few ways you can do that:. First, make sure to never leave leftovers at room temperature for more than two hours. After that, food runs the risk of entering the danger temperature zone —between 40 and degrees F—which is an environment that allows microbes to grow much faster, says Tierno.
And if you're in a particularly hot place, he says you shouldn't leave leftovers out for longer than an hour before transferring them to the fridge and make sure your fridge is cooled to just below 40 degrees F, which is what it should typically be set at. If you can't get leftovers to a fridge before that amount of time has passed—maybe because you're out for the day and carrying it around in your bag—he says it's safest to simply throw them away.
This two-hour rule is the main reason why it can be riskier to save leftovers from a restaurant than food you cook at home, says Worobo. The longer food is kept at room temperature the more likely it is to develop potentially dangerous bacteria, and if you're at a restaurant or ordering delivery, you may not be able to get food in the fridge quickly enough. However, if you are able to refrigerate them within two hours, and the restaurant that they come from uses proper food handling practices, your risks are pretty much the same as they would be with homemade food, says Worobo.
There's also no danger in keeping leftovers in the original takeout containers, but they will probably last longer and retain their flavor and texture better if transferred to something airtight, says Worobo.
Despite what you may have heard, it's totally fine to put leftovers in the fridge while they're still warm. Tierno says that it's common for people to leave leftovers out at room temperature until they cool down completely, but that this is a mistake.
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