Are You in Danger From Hot Food in Your Fridge?
Could intended cooling can lead to unintended food poisoning?
Growing up, I remember hearing a bit of unsolicited and unsourced advice when it came to staying safe in the kitchen: “Don’t put hot food into the refrigerator, or bacteria will grow and you’ll get sick!”
As a child, I took this as fact and didn’t think too much about it. But it came up again recently, and now that I’ve got a PhD focusing on the microbiome — collective populations of diverse bacteria and other microbes — it stuck with me.
Why wouldn’t we want to put hot food into the fridge? Shouldn’t we want to cool food down as quickly as possible, limiting bacterial growth?
A bit of research, and I found that scientists have turned against the classic message. Here’s why.
The Danger Zone of Bacterial Growth
Just like humans, bacteria don’t like environments when they’re too hot or too cold. Outside their range of preferred temperatures, bacteria simply cannot replicate and won’t grow. (They don’t have anyone giving them little knitted mittens or scarves to keep warm.)
There is a zone of temperatures where bacteria thrive:
- In Fahrenheit, it is between 40 and…
