Germaine Mobley, 62, has a passion for dining out. She lives in Texas, where she may choose from a variety of delectable cuisine. And with so many different ethnicities living along the Mexico border, she knew there was no way she could go wrong when it came to selecting supper. But after eating fried rice, she discovered that wasn’t the case, and she may never eat it again.
Mobley, a Dallas-based fitness instructor who lives in Southlake, Texas, says she was driving home from a meal at a restaurant outside of Dallas when she suddenly became ill and discovered that she was getting “very, very sick” on the way home and then “started having problems breathing.” She feared she would die. If she had known that fried rice syndrome had recently afflicted her, she would have driven straight to the hospital.
Mobley tried to downplay the signs in an attempt to carry on with her day. But she was unable to do so. She spent the following days in a hospital intensive care unit, and now wants others to know about “fried rice syndrome.”
It’s not unusual for chefs to leave rice out at room temperature in order to keep clumps at bay. However, if this happens, a microbe can develop that is hazardous to everyone who consumes it.
Bacillus cereus is the name of this potentially harmful microorganism. When rice is left out at room temperature for too long, it becomes infected. The bacteria can develop much faster during the summer in the United States, when it’s as hot as it has been recently.
“Often we will cook batches of rice, we will leave them out at room temperature to cool,” said Celeste Rogers, a culinary expert, to Inside Edition. “It is that period of time that we need to watch. We have a max of six hours to cool that rice.”
Chefs say that this is a frequent practice, but it must not be allowed to continue for more than six hours.
After she was discharged from the hospital, Mobley retained an attorney, Kathryn Knotts, to assist her in her fight against the eatery that she believes nearly killed her.
“’Fried rice syndrome’ sounds like a joke, but it’s very serious. I remember going, ‘I’ve never even heard of this.’ She wasn’t sure what could even really be done, she just wanted this to not continue to happen to other people,” Kathryn Knotts, Mobley’s attorney, said to Dallas News.
“To cool it quickly, we are going to get it on a flat surface so that it has more surface area to cool off,” Rogers stated.
You can imagine what Mobley went through when she ate the tainted fried rice. She won’t be eating fried rice anytime soon, not just from the restaurant where she said she became ill, but also from any other location.
Meanwhile, the Asian King Buffet, where Mobley said she became ill, claims that their cuisine was not to blame.
