Reheating leftover food can sometimes cause digestive issues such as bloating, gas, and pain. Let's learn how to safely reheat and eat leftovers.

 

Among foods, carbohydrate-rich foods such as white rice and potatoes are more likely to cause gastrointestinal symptoms. This is because reheating cooled carbohydrate foods changes their chemical structure, increasing resistant starch.

 

Resistant starch refers to starch that does not react with digestive enzymes, is not absorbed in the small intestine, and is broken down by bacteria in the large intestine. It is a poorly digestible form of carbohydrate, causing food to remain in the intestine, ferment, produce gas, and potentially cause abdominal pain. Caution is needed because consuming resistant starch can worsen symptoms such as abdominal pain, constipation, and diarrhea in cases of irritable bowel syndrome and other gastrointestinal diseases.

The Food Standards Agency (FSA), the UK food safety regulatory agency, recommends the following methods for safely reheating leftover food. To safely reheat foods high in carbohydrates, you need to pay attention from the storage stage. After cooking, the food should be stored in a refrigerator at 8°C or below within two hours. When reheating, the food must be heated thoroughly so that it is hot all the way through to avoid the risk of food poisoning. To ensure even heating throughout, stir the food once during reheating or maintain the appropriate time and temperature. Most bacteria that cause food poisoning, such as Salmonella and Campylobacter, cannot survive at cold temperatures, so it is best to reheat food to at least 63°C.

 

Meanwhile, it is advisable to avoid reheating leftovers more than once. Repeatedly reheating food can cause resistant starch to gradually transform into a form that is difficult to digest, leading to indigestion or gas, and increases the risk of bacteria remaining in the food proliferating again. Leftovers should be reheated only once, and if the amount of food is large and needs to be eaten in multiple servings, it is better to portion out only the necessary amount before reheating and store the remaining food in the refrigerator.

 

=============

You should scoop out and eat the food from the beginning.

Leftovers from eating should be reheated before eating.

I am not doing it,...

 

 

In such cases, abdominal distension, gas, and abdominal pain.

It seems there are cases like this too.