(Correction: This actually happened in 2008 and the paper was published in 2011. Still a good reminder of the importance of temperature control.)

Who doesn’t experiment in college?

But meddling with microbiology can be particularly risky.

A student died after eating leftover pasta that had been left on his kitchen benchtop for five days.

The 20-year-old from the Brussels in Belgium became sick after eating leftover spaghetti with tomato sauce which had been prepared five days earlier and stored at room temperature.

After becoming violently ill, he went to bed to try and sleep the sickness off, only to be found dead in bed the next morning by his devastated parents.

An autopsy later revealed he died from Bacillus cereus.

The story has been featured by Dr Bernard, a licenced practitioner who studies and shares bizarre medical cases from around the world on his YouTube channel.

Dr Bernard analysed the case, which originally featured in the US Journal of Clinical Microbiology, along with several others in a dramatised re-enactment, explaining the harmful bacteria caused AJ’s liver to shut down.

Samples of spoiled pasta and tomato sauce samples were also analysed, with the National Reference Laboratory for Food-borne Outbreak confirming the spaghetti was contaminated with “significant amounts” of the B. cereus — while it was absent in the sauce.