In recent years I’ve heard more and more Asian friends telling me how leftover vegetables are “bad”, whether it’s bad for the liver, carcinogenic, or just “trust me it’s bad”.
I’ve tried to google this and found contradicting information. Some articles talk about nitrates and nitrites being the culprit, and some say that those don’t matter except in very narrow circumstances (babies, who shouldn’t be eating vegetables anyway, or last few weeks of pregnancy).
My understanding is that vegetables naturally contain nitrates/nitrites, and as long as the leftover food is kept refrigerated - without having been in temperature danger zone for too long - they should be fine to eat. And leftover vegetables (especially when they are cooked) won’t actually increase the amount of nitrates/nitrites overnight.
Am I understanding this correctly? Or are there chemical or biological processes at play that actually make leftover vegetables much more unhealthy, to the point of “you have to throw them away”?
I’m definitely not qualified to answer this question, but in my opinion, just eat the vegetables. I leave cooked veggies in the fridge for up to a week and I’ve never had problems. I’d think this issue would be common knowledge if it were significant.
My understanding is that food, it contains nitrates. They do good and bad things.
Processed foods also contain a related but different thing called nitrites. And after you cook vegetables, bacteria also start to convert nitrates into nitrites. However they got there, nitrites, exposed to heat and/or near protein, they convert to nitrosamines, which cause cancer in big enough doses.
If you’re boiling vegetables and letting them sit out at room temperature for two days, then eating them, especially in conjunction with protein *and* reheating all of it to unusually high temperatures (or microwaving them)….
I think they are referring to the potential of nitrite and nitrosamine forming in leftovers. I remember reading an article a while ago discussing this. But I don’t know enough about this topic, hope someone can actually provide some answers.
Is an old Asian tale told by old mothers that have to many PhDs. I hear it every other day from my in-law and I in my 50s. My poor family have been eating left over for years with and without refrigerator. My parents are almost in their 90s, and I am Asian.
>https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC6952105/
>https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0227551
>The nitrate content of fresh and cooked vegetables and their health-related risks