"Peter H.M. Brooks" > wrote in message
...
> I'm making a curry for my father's 85th birthday party tomorrow. Not that
> that's particularly relevant to the post, but still...
>
> My sister works for a food retailer and is consequently paranoid about
> various matters related to food - as, of course, any good food retailer
> must be. I'm not sure that quite the same level of paranoia is required at
> home though.
>
> My sister is of the opinion that it would be dangerous to re-heat the
> curry tomorrow morning, then travel over to her house (a twenty minute
> drive) and then heat it again for serving. She's afraid that everybody
> will be poisoned if this happens. According to her re-heating the food
> twice will be much more dangerous than re-heating it twice.
>
> She might be right, but I'm interested to know exactly what the mechanism
> is. If I heat food to boiling point then only bacteria that survive at
> higher temparatures will survive, during the cooling period it may indeed
> be re-colonised, by bacteria from the air but again this would be killed
> by re-heating to boiling (and keeping it there for a few minutes, of
> course).
>
> I can see that it is wise usually to keep food refridgerated and only heat
> that which is required shortly before the meal, and I'm not advocating
> re-heating the same curry many times over several days. However, I am
> interested to know just how big the danger of food poisoning would be from
> two re-headings tomorrow relative to only one. Would it truly create a
> danger of poisoning or is it paranoid to worry about it?
>
> If there's an URL describing bacterial growth and re-heating food showing
> research results I'd be delighted to read that.
>
> --
> "You will not ask me what is the point of envy.--You are determined, I
> see, to have no curiosity.--You are wise--but _I_ cannot be wise. Emma, I
> must tell you what you will not ask, though I may wish it unsaid the next
> moment." -- Emma, Jane Austen
> * TagZilla 0.057 * http://tagzilla.mozdev.org


Your Sister is correct

N10