How safe is reheating of food

I had traveled for the weekend to my grandma's place. Oftentimes when I go over to the village, I'm particularly happy because I eat a lot of fresh foods especially vegetables, but once in a while I have to deal with the occasional stale food that has been reheated over and over again. 

This is a problem a lot of people experience in Nigeria due to inconsistent power supply and lack of storage facilities for foods.

Growing up in this part of the world, I've watched my mother prepare food in large quantities except when preparing quick foods like noodles or pasta. When asked, her reply was always, "it saves cost."

Which led me to ask myself certain questions:

Is the reheating of food healthy? If yes, how often should it be done? 

If no, how then can we make our meals warm and delicious again when they've gone cold?

Food is as important to us as life itself, therefore, we must handle it with care.

Reheating food is most times kicked against because the more times you cool and reheat food, the higher the risk of food poisoning. This could also give rise to bacterial growth when food is cooled too slowly or reheated inadequately. 

While reheating of food is, unfortunately, not as healthy as we would like it to be, it's is an integral part of our lives and cannot be easily discarded especially by those with a lower spending capacity.

It is important to know that if we must have leftovers, they:

✷ Should be cooled and refrigerated, to be eaten within 2-3days.

✷ Preferencially, leftovers should be completely frozen and stored. Once frozen, it could stay for over a month.

                               ☬Note☬

✪ Leftovers should not be reheated more than once.

✪ Do not refreeze leftovers that have already been thawed.

✪ Leftovers should be served immediately after reheating.

I've also heard a lot of people complain about loss of moisture after reheating; now this is what you can do to help retain moisture in leftover foods.

✷ Oven: One of the best ways to reheat food is using the oven. Retaining moisture is usually done by covering the food with a foil paper.

✷ Microwave: This is the one of the fastest ways to reheat food, but the texture of some foods can be affected in the process.

Now, I know that even still, it'll be hard to avoid excessive and unhealthy reheating of leftovers, especially in a developing country like Nigeria. However, one important tip that could help is to cook just the amount of food that is needed for that day and, if you must cook in large quantities, take out the bit to be eaten, while the rest of the food remains frozen.

Fun facts:

╬Freezing only stops the growth of bacteria, but doesn’t kill it; cooking does.

╬Foods are meant to be kept either cold or hot; there should be no in-between.