A 20-year-old student slept and never woke up. It turned out that he had made this mistake when eating pasta
The Journal of Clinical Microbiology first reported this tragic case in 2008 when a young man never woke up hours after eating dinner.
Recently, the unfortunate incident has once again made headlines as ‘Dr. Bernard’ examined the case closely on his YouTube channel.
The video got millions of views and several major media outlets are trying to spread the information so that a similar thing would not happen again in the future.
Accordingly, in 2008, a 20-year-old student from Belgium known as ‘AJ’ in the 2008 report returned home from university and heated a bowl of pasta and tomato sauce in the microwave. Until the moment of heating, the food was placed on the counter for five days at room temperature.
After eating the pasta, the student went out to engage in sports activities.
Less than an hour later, AJ ran to his home, as noted in the report.
He suffered from severe nausea, cramps and headaches, as well as vomiting and diarrhea. Despite all this, he did not receive medical treatment and drank only water.
AJ believed he would go to bed and wake up feeling better the next day. He went to bed at around midnight.. but never woke up.
When AJ did not wake up in the morning, his parents got worried. They entered his room and found that their son passed away.
According to the report, the cause of this case was food poisoning caused by Bacillus cereus – a bacterium that produces a toxin that causes vomiting and diarrhea.
Liver damage
An autopsy and food test showed the bacterium was so toxic it caused AJ’s liver to collapse.
Dr. Bernard warns about eating leftover food.
“A lot of people eat pasta, or any other type of noodle, that stays for a day or two and they’re fine”, he said.
“But beware of food left outside for a few hours. If the food smells weird, it’s always better to be safe than sorry afterwards”.
Food heating is not the problem. The problem lies in the time between the moment you cooked the food and the moment you chose to eat it again.
The most important thing is to pay attention to details when it comes to hygiene, and not let the food stay at room temperature too long.
