The fridge is a staple of any home kitchen in the UK. It is essential for keeping our food chilled and fresh, reducing the need to throw any away.

While this is a definite pro in terms of saving money and being more environmentally friendly, sometimes it can come with hidden risks.

Health bodies have warned that certain foods are not suitable for fridge storage, due to the potential for them to become “toxic”.

Gut health specialist and author, Dr Dimple Jangda took to social media platform Instagram to explain this to her more than 500,000 followers.

She specifically warned of four foods that “turn toxic when you refrigerate” them.

These foods are:

Garlic

A popular plant used to add flavour to many dishes, garlic can become mouldy in the fridge.

She said: “Never buy peeled garlic and refrigerate it because it starts catching mould very quickly and garlic mould has actually been linked to cancer.

“Have you seen what a terrible odour it has?

“Always buy fresh garlic with a peel. Unpeel it only when you’re about to cook it and keep it outside the refrigerator always.”

Cornell University, in the US, warns: “Storing fresh garlic in the fridge is generally not a good idea.

“This is because garlic bulbs are low-acidity, making them prone to Clostridium botulinum, better known as the culprit behind botulism.”

Onions

Leaving half an onion in the fridge could be dangerous, Dr Jangda said. She continued: “Now, onion is a crop that is resistant to low temperatures.

“When you refrigerate it the starch starts converting into sugar and starts catching mould. Lots of people do this mistake of cutting half an onion, cooking it and keeping the other half in the fridge.

“Never do that. It starts collecting all the unhealthy bacteria in the environment and catches mould.”

Ginger

Like garlic and onion, ginger is susceptible to mould.

“It starts catching mould very quickly when you refrigerate it and that has been linked with kidney and liver failures,” she said. “Do not refrigerate it.”

Rice

Dr Jangda referenced a recent trend in which people leave cooked rice in the fridge.

She added: “Lots of people have started keeping cooked rice in the refrigerator because of the resistance to starch and they think it is helping the cholesterol and blood sugar levels.

“But in fact, rice is one of the ingredients that catches the mould the fastest. If you’re going to refrigerate it, not more than 24 hours.”

The NHS warns that uncooked rice can contain spores of Bacillus cereus, bacteria that can cause food poisoning. The spores can survive when rice is cooked.

To avoid this it recommends:

• Ideally, serve rice as soon as it’s been cooked
• If that’s not possible, cool the rice as quickly as possible (ideally within one hour).
• Keep rice in the fridge for no more than one day until reheating
• When you reheat rice, always check that it’s steaming hot all the way through
• Do not reheat rice more than once.