It’s a hard decision to make. If you eat it and die, you’ll be really sorry. If you eat it and get horribly sick, you’ll be just as sorry—until you start to feel better, when you’ll finally say, “At least this experience has taught me a lesson, and I’ll never do that again.”
So I placed the safely (?) unopened string cheese in the refrigerator and sat around for five days thinking about it. That didn’t help. So I went to the manufacturer’s website, but they didn’t give a phone number and the email form asked too many personal questions.
So I turned to the world’s greatest string cheese expert, Google.
At Answers.yahoo.com, questioner JuJuBee left her string cheese “under the [car] seat in a sealed package for the last two days” and someone named Brynn’s suggestion, “I wouldn’t eat it,” was voted the best answer. It was also the only answer.
I didn’t want to throw away good food based on one opinion, so I clicked over to Answers.com (apparently unrelated to Answers.yahoo.com), where the single answer by SuzziQ was much more palatable:
“String cheese is individually packaged in a clean environment, is a cultured food, and is low moisture. It can be safely left out of the refrigerator for hours.” She added that it would be fine in a backpack all day, “so long as the backpack is not left lying on the blacktop in the summer sun for an hour.”
SuzziQ, like Brynn, was just one person, so I couldn’t trust her completely. But
at Chowhound.chow.com, all 15 respondents to a question about leaving Monterey Jack and cheddar out all night echoed ballulah's answer: “It's safe, you'll be fine.”
Thew (so sure of being right that (s)he felt no need to capitalize or punctuate) replied, “the french never refrigerate their cheese,” and neither did the commenters on this food site.
“I come from a long line of 'cheese people,’“ stated romansperson. “…My grandfather would have heartily disapproved of refrigerating cheddar—it detracts from the taste and texture of the cheese.”
Chowhound Smartie leaves butter unrefrigerated on a dish, even in Florida. Whitemist blames Health Department over-reaction on the need to control restaurants’ “handling and serving of larger quantities to a whole lot more people than you or I would. I prefer my cheeses unrefrigerated.”
Article comments
1 - Mark
I've taken individually wrapped string cheese to work with me for years, never refrigerated. Usually I eat it same day, but "leftovers" (still wrapped) may go an extra day, or even 2. I estimate I eat 50 string cheeses/month, or 600/year, so after n=several thousand samples, I've not had any problems.
2 - Jessie
Try googling string cheese and backpacking... Many people I know will take cheese backpacking with them without refrigeration for more than a week - and I have never had anyone report bad results from doing so.
3 - Justin
I routinely eat string cheese that has been left out for days, without notable consequence.
4 - Sondra
Thanks, folks, for being guinea pigs for the less adventurous among us. I've started eating bits of left out foods but throwing away more, so as not to bring on the wrath of the listeria monocytogenes.
5 - David
LOL Sondra. Thoroughly enjoyed this after googeling weather my string cheese was ok to eat. Witty and entertaining
6 - Sondra
Thanks, David, for letting me know I'm not the only one paranoid enough to google whether my food is about to kill me.
7 - Laurie D
I just figured out what made me sick earlier today was string cheese that had been refrigerated, outside and back in the frig at least one time and maybe two. I was pretty sick, room spinning and sick to my stomach. No more room temp cheese for me!
8 - Sondra
That's pretty sick. I didn't even take into consideration what repeatedly taking the cheese in and out of refrigeration might do. At least you're OK enough to write about it.
9 - KatieDoodle
I definitely appreciate this article. My roommate and I have to defrost our fridge and leave it off for the winter break, and I wasn't sure if my string cheese would survive the four hour drive back home the next day. I think it'll be okay though. :) Thank you!
10 - Sondra
Uh...Katie...I don't know if this is really the definitive article on long lasting cheese. I didn't even research it on Google Scholar or call a bunch of gastroenterologists for their opinion--just Answers.com, where anybody can claim to be an expert, and Mrs. Cookwell, who's surprised we're all not dead yet.
And then there's Laurie, two comments above yours: "...pretty sick, room spinning and sick to my stomach."
You might want to finish off the string cheese before the defrost and invest in a fresh pack for the four hour drive--or at least an hour of it, before it has a chance to turn into Killer Cheese.
Which, of course, I'm saying for legal reasons. In other words: Author cannot be held accountable for any adverse reactions to said cheese and advises reasonable precautions when handling anything less long lasting than salt, sugar and dehydrated potato flakes, which can safely be left out for 30 years.
11 - DD
Mrs. Cookwell would not have lasted a day in the 1700's.
12 - Sondra
Good point. Canada wasn't even a "federal state governed as a parliamentary democracy and a constitutional monarchy" (according to Wikipedia) till 1867, so there wouldn't have been a Canadian Partnership for Consumer Food Safety in the 1700s, and she'd have had to find another job, possibly milking cows and making cheese that needed to be left out overnight.
13 - Alicia
Cheese.com offers serving tips
Chilled cheeses should be taken out of the refrigerator one and a half or two hours before serving.
Let cold cheese warm up for about half an hour before eating to allow the flavour and aroma to develop.
In my experience, room temperature has far better flavor than cold cheese. I often eat day old string cheese.
14 - HuntMode
Sandra, you are a researcher after my own heart, which is how I found you. Yep, found my individually packaged string cheese didn't make it into the frig... was it safe? Agh! I'm going to risk it...maybe. Grin.
15 - Sondra
HuntMode, let us know if you survive. If not, well, at least your last meal had a better "flavour and aroma" than safely refrigerated cheese.
16 - Brandon M
I'm hoping HuntMode is still alive. I myself am going to risk it as well and eat both packages of string cheese I left out over night. Whatever fate befalls me, I will try to get back here and let you know.
17 - Sondra
If you can't get back in your current form, try to send a sign. Like an asteroid or a meteorite. Preferably in Russia or China, where they're set up to handle such things.
18 - cheezy
this is a really stupid article
19 - prof. cheese
i took 4 string cheese individual packs with me and didnt get a chance to eat them, walked about an hour in 94F temp. the cheese was in my backpack. when i got home i took two of em and ate em. then i thought are these spoiled? no just warm...tasted fine and ate the other two. out of boredom i looked up how long string cheese lasts, found this page and laughed. found another cheese in my backpack from a day ago, ate that too. one week later similar situation and ate the cheese no problems. you're one crazy person who worries too much and will cut your life short by trying to be too healthy as it has a decaying effect on lifespan. i.e. you're making yourself weaker immune-wise.
20 - Sondra
First: I cannot claim to know this firsthand, but I have reason to believe that "cheezy" is not commenter "cheezy's" real name. In fact, I believe that comment was actually made by Mrs. Cookwell, the Canadian food advisor whose job would be in jeopardy if the truth got out about string cheese and the Canadian Partnership for Consumer Food Safety Education, her boss, found out.
Second: "prof. cheese" also has a highly suspicious moniker and may not be in the cheese education profession at all. However, this commenter did contribute some worthwhile statistics on cheese consumption, and we may now feel safe eating overheated, week old cheese, as long as we don't have expectations of living any longer than 7 or 8 days, since we do not know if "prof. cheese" will survive much beyond the time the (potentially poisonous) cheese has been circulating in the professor's digestive system.