The growth phase was also shown to affect the survival of B. cereus at low pH. B. cereus vegetative cells in the early and mid-exponential phase were the most sensitive to acid exposure (at pH 4.6e5.0, survival ~0.02%), whereas in the stationary phase, their resistance rapidly increased (even up to 100% survival) [19,23]. Ceuppens et al. [28] reported similar results in their studies of B. cereus NVH 1230-88 cultivated in a medium at pH 4.0, which
simulated the environment of a human stomach after food ingestion. The number of vegetative cells, which were in the exponential phase of growth at the beginning of the study, decreased by about 2 log CFU/mL after 2 h of incubation, whereas the count of vegetative cells in the stationary phase decreased by only