Man, 20, found dead in bed after reheating tomato pasta at his parents' house

A student died after eating a bowl of reheated pasta in tomato sauce at his parents' house.

AJ, from Brussels, Belgium, had prepared the dish five days earlier and left it at room temperature in the kitchen.

After a long day at school, the 20-year-old quickly reheated the meal in the microwave to eat before heading out to play sport.

He returned home just 30 minutes later suffering from a headache, stomach pains and nausea, and eventually experienced diarrhoea and vomiting.

Pixabay/RitaE

He drank some water and attempted to sleep off the pain, falling asleep at around midnight.

However, when the lad's parents checked on him the following morning because he didn’t get out of bed for school, they found him dead in his bed.

Investigators determined that he'd passed away at around 4am, about ten hours after consuming the leftover pasta dish.

An autopsy later found that AJ had moderate centrilobular liver necrosis, which likely caused his organs to shut down.

The report said: "The spaghetti had been kept at room temperature for several days.

"This allowed Bacillus cereus to grow to very high concentrations and produced the high toxin concentration (14.8 μg/g) found in the pasta and which is likely responsible for the fatal outcome."

Pixabay/Myriams-Fotos

AJ died in 2008 but his story reemerged recently after users of TikTok and Reddit took to the platforms to warn others about 'fried rice syndrome.'

This refers to food poisoning caused by eating reheated foods which haven't been stored correctly, including rice, pasta and potatoes.

Uncooked foods contain spores of Bacillus cereus which are heat resistant and can survive when the food is cooked.

If the cooked food is then left at room temperature, these spores grow into bacteria which multiply and may produce toxins that cause vomiting and/or diarrhoea.

In rare cases, like AJ's, it can be fatal.

Social media users were horrified to find out how serious 'fried rice syndrome' can be.

One person on Reddit wrote: "I regularly eat pizza a day or two later after it’s left on the side. I had no idea."

Another said, "Three days is my rule for leftovers. I’m going to revisit that."

But others on TikTok were more shocked that it wasn't common knowledge to not eat leftovers that hadn't been stored in the refrigerator.

"Do people not know that they need to refrigerate food?" one person queried.

To prevent your leftovers from making you sick, make sure any starchy food you consume hasn't been kept at room temperature for an extended period of time.

Cool down starchy foods as quickly as possible — ideally within an hour — and keep them in the fridge until you're ready to eat.