Wait what?

You consider food that has been properly refrigerated for 3 days a health risk?

If all ingredients have been properly heated in the cooking process and cooled down quickly (letting it cool down in room temperature is not “quickly” it should be good for a much longer time. Put the food in an airtight container. If it’s cold outside, like below 4°C, you can put it outside to cool. Otherwise, put the container in cold water. Make sure to change the water if it gets luke warm. When the food is luke warm/room tempered you move the container to the fridge (cooling capacity of your fridge determines how warm food you can cook down in the fridge. The cooler food, the better).

If kept below 8°C (I prefer a temperature of 1°C to 4°C in my fridge) it should be good for at least a week. Up to 2-3-4 weeks depending on how poor, courageous and/or stupid you are.

Always: Use your nose and if it smells a bit unusual, not just “off”, you should consider throwing it away. The smell receptors you have have by evolution been calibrated towards smelling “spoiled”. Especially spoiled meats, most likely since the micro organisms and the toxins they produce are among the most dangerous to us compared to what’s in spoiled vegetables. If a piece of meat is really off, you most likely won’t even be able to breath normally within 4-5 inches of it.

Look for color change, tiny tiny dots of something that doesn’t seem to belong in the food. (It doesn’t have to be “hairy”. Bacterias doesn’t create “hairy dots”). If it does have dots or after coloring, then throw it away. If you see “hairy” it’s most likely mold. Not mold actually, but the fruiting body of mold, which is just the tip of the iceberg. What you don’t see if the actual mold which continues det down in the food. So never just cut away the bad parts and eat what looks ok. It’s everywhere, even in parts that looks good.

But if you wouldn’t be able to eat one week old properly refrigerated food, all of our ancestors 100 years ago would have died of food poisoning. I mean “all” as all of them and not just the large amount of people that actually died from botulism, salmonella and all the other food related fun ways to die.