If it gets up to temp, what’s the difference? Answers I have seen is it takes too long to reheat, but how does that apply to raw food if the time is the same?
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The issue with food spoiling is that tiny organisms called bacteria will grow in the food, and some of their excretions are poisonous. Even if you later kill the bacteria with heat the poison is still there; hot poison is still poison.
Bacteria reproduce by dividing so their growth tends to be exponential. This means that for the first few generations their numbers don’t really change that much. If you have 100 bacteria then 200, 400, 800, etc. that is probably fine. Bacteria are tiny and the dose makes the poison, so a small amount of toxin isn’t going to cause a problem. But when you have a billion bacteria where each generation is making a billion more the amount of poison can be a problem!
That is where reheating leftovers can be a problem. With the raw food you should be starting with a much smaller population of bacteria so you have a longer time before they can grow to a problematic population size. Leftovers already had time to grow a bigger population so you have less time to let them grow before their poisons become dangerous. Slowly reheating in a slow cooker can allow time to generate the poisons even if the bacteria die at the end temperature.
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