FRIED RICE SYNDROME—SHOULD YOU BE CONCERNED?

FRIED RICE SYNDROME—SHOULD YOU BE CONCERNED?

By Shane Robert

I’m not the most tech-savvy person. I know about as much as the average bear and am generally comfortable with using most types of technology. Where my knowledge ends, despite living in San Francisco, is with the deep side of tech. Algorithms and such. I know what an algorithm is, of course, and I understand that they are essential for much of what we rely on today, particularly when it comes to social media.

It’s beyond me what influences these algorithms to make certain things trend. Perhaps this is why I often find myself surprised at the videos that make their way to such a wide audience that clients start to ask about them. They send me links to videos of some seemingly random person talking about, frankly, a very niche topic.

I had this exact thing happen this week when multiple people sent me videos of people talking about “fried rice syndrome.” For those unfamiliar with the topic, which I assume is most of you, this name refers to a type of bacterial growth that can occur on grains, most commonly rice, that have been cooked, stored, and reheated for eating. There have been a few cases of people getting sick from eating fried rice, which is usually made from 1+ day-old rice. Hence the name.

The bacteria in question are Bacillus cereus (B. cereus). It is a spore-forming bacterium commonly found in soil and on grains, including rice. Though the bacteria themselves may not, the spores survive cooking, and if cooked rice is left at warm room temperature (typically 15–50 °C / 59–122 °F) for several hours, those spores can germinate, multiply, and produce toxins that cause illness such as diarrhea and vomiting. In most cases, these symptoms can last from 6 to 24 hours.

With this knowledge, the talking heads in the videos give you dire warnings about how you should NEVER do [fill-in-the-blank]. The funny thing is that I have seen different videos that contradict one another. One said you should immediately put the rice in the fridge. Another said you shouldn’t eat refrigerated rice at all. Which is it?

When it comes to avoiding the possibility of this particular bacteria, the rules are pretty straightforward:

• Cook rice fully: Heat to ≥ 165 °F (74 °C)...this is easy since you cook rice in boiling water, you’re well beyond 165 °F  
• Cool it quickly (Refrigerate within 1 hr, ideally using shallow containers)
• Store in cold temperature  ≤ 40 °F (4 °C); discard after 3-4 days in the fridge
• Reheat thoroughly (≥ 165 °F again) or eat cold

If you follow these simple steps, then you are basically guaranteed that you are safe. 

The bigger question, in my opinion, is whether this is even something that we should be worried about to begin with. When you dig into the data, the answer is that it’s not. Let’s break it down.

• The CDC estimates that the U.S. sees roughly 63,000 B. cereus foodborne illnesses per year out of about 48 million total foodborne illnesses
• The U.S. population is ≈ 330 million.
• That means roughly 1 in 5,000 people experience a B. cereus illness each year.
• Rice is a common vehicle, but it accounts for only a fraction of these. Somewhere between 10–30% in some B. cereus outbreak studies.

So, being generous, that’s about 1 in 15,000–50,000 people per year getting sick from rice-related B. cereus, or 0.13125% of foodborne illnesses in the US. If someone were to hypothetically eat rice daily (which I and many lifters do), the per-meal risk could roughly be on the order of 1 in 5 million to 1 in 20 million per serving under average U.S. conditions. I eat a lot of rice, but I don’t eat that much rice.

To drive this home further, there is a mean of 0 deaths annually in the US from foodborne B. cereus (domestically‐acquired). In fact, in outbreak surveillance data for 1998-2009, 11 deaths total were recorded from B. cereus outbreaks during the whole of that 11-year period worldwide. Those deaths, as is common in these cases, were among already compromised people.

Should you be worried about fried rice syndrome? The answer, in my opinion, is no, especially if you follow the prep and handling laid out above.