A case has recently been receiving attention after a video was posted by Dr Bernard on YouTube. It’s about a student who ended up dying in his sleep after he ate 5-day-old pasta.
The 20-year-old student who is unnamed, reportedly used to prepare his meals for the week on a Sunday, in an attempt to save money and time.
The student boiled pasta, put it into Tupperware containers to be eaten during the week after adding a sauce and then reheating it, says Dr Bernard.
The student reheated spaghetti which was prepared 5 days prior and then left in the kitchen at room temperature – this is according to a case study in the Journal of Clinical Microbiology.
The student though that the odd taste was due to the new tomato sauce he put on his spaghetti. He still ate it all and went out to play sports.
Within 30 minutes of him eating the pasta, he started experiencing bad abdominal pain, nausea, and a headache.
When he returned home, he experienced watery diarrhea and vomited, but did not seek any medical attention and chose to stay in his house, drink water, and tried to sleep it off.
The following morning his parents were worried when he didn’t get out of bed for college and went in to check on him at 11am – he was already dead.
An autopsy revealed he had died at 4am, which is about 10 hours after he ate the spaghetti. Samples of his pasta and pasta sauce were sent to the National Reference Laboratory for Food-borne Outbreaks (NRLFO) for analysis.
The autopsy results showed signs of liver necrosis, indicating that the student’s liver had shut down, as well as possible signs of acute pancreatitis.
Bacillus cereus, a bacteria responsible for “fried rice syndrome”, food poisoning commonly caused by leaving fried rice dishes sitting at room temperature for several hours, was detected.
The sample of the pasta contained significant amounts of Bacillus cereus, which confirmed that the pasta meal was the cause of his sickness that eventually led to his death.
