Surely the bacteria that grew after the expiration date will have been killed in the cooking process?
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You can kill the bacteria but not kill the toxins that they produced.Botulinum toxin is particular nasty and can occur in improper canned food.
It depends on the food. Sometimes, even “rotten” food can be edible, or edible after being sterilized. However, in some cases, the food breaking down (often with the aid of bacteria) can actually create a toxic, non-living substance (in simple terms, a poisonous chemical). Since that toxin is not living cells, it isn’t always destroyed by heat, but it can still poison a person.
Oftentimes, food poisoning is caused because you eat a germ and the germ then grows inside you and make you sick. Killing bacteria by cooking stops this kind of food poisoning by stopping the germ from growing.
Othertimes, food poisoning is caused because there is a chemical in the food that is poisonous. Some germs create these poisons as they grow, and sometimes old food just chemically breaks down. Most cooking is not powerful enough to destroy most poisons (especially if you want to eat food instead of burnt charcoal), so cooking doesn’t prevent this kind of food poisoning.
It depends on the food. Expiration dates often don’t tell you when food is unsafe, but just tell you the point where the manufacturer doesn’t thing it’s good enough quality. For example, milk, if it’s pasteurized, is safe to drink after it’s expiration date, but it’s going to taste disgusting.
The bacteria may not all die in cooking, just be reduced to a safe level if we’re talking fresh food.
For expired food, the bacteria levels may have grown so that the proportional reduction by cooking still leaves too high a number (say 1/100,000 left in fresh, 100/100,000,000 in expired) . There’s also accumulation of the byproducts of the bacteria digesting the food that may be toxic- in some booze making processes, for example, the yeast stop when they’ve made enough alcohol to kill themselves if left long enough.
Sometimes it’s the bacteria that are dangerous, but sometimes it’s the bacterial poop that’s dangerous. Cooking food kills bacteria, but doesn’t do anything about the bacterial poop.
A good example is botulism – it’s not caused by the bacteria *Clostridium botulinum*, but rather by the bacteria’s neurotoxic excretion.
It’s not bacteria themselves that make you sick – it’s the chemicals bacteria produce (toxins or poisons) that make you sick. Cooking/heating food may kill some or even all of the bacteria, but it won’t necessarily remove the toxins already in the food
because in your example you will basically eat cooked bacteria poop. and eating poop isnt good for you.
(obviously this is a crass oversimplification)
Bacteria poop. Allow bacteria to live in something too long and the amount of toxic waste products they produce becomes harmful
If theres mice in you room, but you kill them would you be fine with keepign them there and them rotting away?
Same idea. They can die, but their “remains” are still there that break down and stay toxic. Some of them release toxins which is unaffected by heat as well.
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