Student who ate leftovers before playing sport tragically died just ten hours later

A student who had reheated five-day-old leftovers died the next day, after consuming bacteria which prompted his organs to shut down.

After a day of studies, the 20-year-old quickly reheated the meal he had made five days before - which had been left out at room temperature - and then rushed out to play sports.

AJ, from Brussels, Belgium, returned home just half an hour later, and started to feel ill.

People have been warned not to make the same mistake. (Getty stock image)

He suffered with symptoms such as a headache, stomach pains, and nausea, which eventually presented itself as vomiting and diarrhoea.

After sipping water, he decided he should try to sleep the pain off, and fell asleep around midnight.

To his parents' horror after checking on him as he didn’t get up in the morning, they found that their son was dead.

Investigators who looked into the case decided that AJ had passed away at about 4am, around ten hours after he consumed the reheated pasta dish.

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

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

He had consumed bacteria. (Getty stock image)

“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.”

AJ’s death happened in 2008, but has resurfaced online recently amid conversations around reheating foods which haven’t been stored correctly.

Foods people are being warned over include pasta, rice and potatoes, all of which should never be kept at room temperature for an extended period of time.

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, consuming the bacteria can actually be fatal.

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 in disbelief that it wasn't common knowledge to not eat leftovers that hadn't been stored in the fridge.

“Do people not know that they need to refrigerate food?” one person worryingly asked.