Is it ok for teen to cook rice at 8am to eat at lunchtime in school? It'll be kept in his school bag

[RiceRiceBabiy]

for 5.5 hours until eaten.
This is regular basmati rice he wants to cook.

He has previously microwaved those packets of rice you can buy in the supermarket and taken those in with no adverse effects.

FFS, it's not like it turns into nuclear waste after 25 hours.

Food hygiene advice is ridiculously conservative and I've taken it with a pinch of salt for decades.

According to some on here, I should have died of food poisoning at least twice a week, yet have never been ill despite eating reheated rice about twice a week for as long as I can remember.

Even when it's been eaten 2/3 days after cooking, kept at room temperature overnight or in the morning at work, it's not made me ill.

I live In Japan - this is how people do lunch here. Instead of bread they make onigiri (rice balls) and even sandwiches where rice is used instead of bread. If it's the same day it's no problem.

By the way, I have also done a food hygiene course. It's not to do with reheating the rice, it is to do with it sitting at room temperature. That's when the bacteria grows.

Realistically, how many people do you know who have been ill from eating rice. This being scared of rice seems to be limited to the UK. I haven't heard of it in other countries I've lived in. Bizarre!

The science behind the rice issue is that if it's cooked and left at room temperature for any time it grows bacteria. This bacteria produce toxins. Reheating thoroughly will kill off the bacteria but not the toxin. Hence food hygiene regulations say warm food consume within 4 hours and cold 6 hours. The microwave packets are safer.

It's the normal thing in all Asian countries! Cook in the morning and make lunches/tiffin boxes.

Rinse it under cold water to cool?

Done it many many times.
Cold in a rice salad
Warm in a flask (eg with a curry).
he’ll be fine

I know.

You have to work der how people in those countries ever survived…..

Nonsense. I've taken rice salads or meals into work every day for years, not kept cold and I've been absolutely fine.

And do you make your rice salads with warm rice, which OP's ds will have? Or do you use cooled down rice?

I wouldn't risk rice that's been sat at room temperature

It's quite a high risk of food poisoning
But mostly just throwing up for a few hours

So yes people survive

Do you have stats to evaluate the ‘quite high risk’ of being ill?

Is that one in 50, 1 in 10.000 people who will get ill or 1 in 5?

I found that often when people (and the media) talk about high risk, they mean an increase of the risk. But if you risk is like 1 in 1 million, even and increase of 100% still leaves you with a very low risk of being ill.

You can cook it and run it under the cold tap in a sieve?

Spot on @SwitchDiver.
I have had bacillus cereus food poisoning from a Chinese buffet and was very ill indeed.

It isn't a risk I would want to take ever again. I won't touch rice at buffets now, not do I keep leftover rice from takeaways to eat the next day.

Quite tricky to get to absolute risk because you would need to know how many people took the risk as well as how many got poorly

So far I have found

2 in 100,000 people in USA in one year - with 1 in 3 Americans eat rice regularly ) at least monthly )

So that's 1 in 15,000 rice eater but not all rice eater would eat rice left out at room temperature for 5 hours

A test where
98 out of 178 raw rice samples had the bacteria that causes the upset

So between 1 in 2 and 1 in 15,000

Not terribly helpful
But I think you could easily drop a zero from the upper limit because so many people are aware of the risk

I do this all the time, not in the fridge. Wouldn't think twice. How do you think people coped before fridges. I've never had food poisonings in my life

I’m not from the uk originally. But fried rice is usually made with at least day old if not two rice.

All the people saying rinse it in cold water! Yuck! Honestly don’t do that it will be gross. You can stand the pan in cold water but I really wouldn’t add water into it.

@RiceRiceBabiy would he like sushi rice eaten in a cold block or with a filling?

Another example of how people don't understand risk and chance

It's like a lottery

You can play it all your life and never win
Doesn't mean no one wins

But actually it's less like the lottery and more like a school raffle - why? Because the chance of getting a prize in the raffle is much larger

I suspect not.

Not terribly helpful
But I think you could easily drop a zero from the upper limit because so many people are aware of the risk

@midgemadgemodge except that most cases are linked with takeaways etc… not home cooked food.

Also it seems that the type of illness linked with cooked rice varies from one country to the next.
I struggled to find any number ps with the absolute risk…. But it seems that said risk is linked with many many different factors, including what you are eating the rice with, how you are cooking the rice and the state if the microbiome which makes assessing risk very tricky indeed.

Advice on how dangerous it is looks like it’s mainly linked to guidelines given to the food industry as said bacteria is found everywhere, not just in rice either.
Saying that it should be replicated at home or that the number of bacteria can be used as away of evaluating risk isn’t obvious, from what I read.

Note: if anyone has a link to the research giving absolute risk etc… please share.

But if you have people playing the rice lottery multiple times a week for decades and never winning food poisoning, the chance of doing so must be pretty low.

So all this 'you will die if you eat rice that was cooked a few hours ago and not immediately irradiated to kill all the bugs' isn't a realistic assessment of the situation either.

Makes you wonder how do people in Asia and South America /Central America Survive then?
they keep rice in pots all day , no reheating or anything ,

He’d better not move to Japan OP! 😂

Cook it, make into rice salad, freeze in portions, and let him take a frozen portion, which will have defrosted by lunchtime. Would that work?