Beth Skwarecki, Lifehacker, Aug. 27, 2015
The worst food poisoning I ever had was a few days after returning from a weekend vacation with friends. When I finally dragged myself out of the bathroom, an email was waiting for me: “Is everybody else feeling okay? I know our dinner together was a few days ago so I’m sure it’s not that, but I just wanted to check.”
We never found out what food was the culprit, but there was only one meal we all shared and every adult there came down with vomiting and diarrhea about two days later. That’s classic food poisoning. But sometimes the situation is less clear. How do you know when you have food poisoning versus a run-of-the-mill stomach bug, and what should you do about it?
The truth is, there’s no medical difference between “food poisoning” and other diarrheal illnesses. The same germs that cause food poisoning are also common causes of stomach flu or traveler’s diarrhea.
In all of these cases, some virus or bacterium, or perhaps even a parasite, took the fecal-oral route from (sorry) somebody’s butt into your mouth. From the germ’s point of view, it’s a wonderful way to travel: you get eaten, trigger the person’s body to spew from either or both ends, then do your best to stick to surfaces that they or somebody else might touch.
Norovirus is a master at this game: in 2009, a passenger threw up on an airplane, and a flight attendant immediately cleaned up the mess. Over the next week, half of the flight attendants who worked on that plane got sick. In another case, members of a soccer team ate snacks from sealed bags that had been in the bathroom with a sick teammate. Investigators think that droplets containing the virus settled on the bags, and the other players got the virus onto their hands while eating. Call it food poisoning or a stomach bug–either way, they got sick.
Other organisms follow a similar route, but usually not with such ruthless efficiency. Maybe some fecal bacteria from the farm (say, E. coli) got onto some beef and into a grinder, and from there spread to several packages of hamburger meat. You leave the meat out too long–maybe in a cooler at a picnic that wasn’t as cool as it should have been–and the bacteria multiply. Then you cook the burger, but not all the way since you like them rare. Your immune system kills off most of the bacteria, but not quite enough. The bacteria make a toxin that makes you sick. Mission completed.
If you ate with friends and all of you come down with vomiting or diarrhea at the same time, there’s a good chance there was something wrong with that meal. But sometimes you can’t track it down so neatly and it’s hard to know where exactly the culprit came from.
Intuition is bad at helping us track down the source of food poisoning. People who get sick are likely to think back to their last meal or two, especially if it came from a sketchy restaurant. In truth, our biases probably influence where we point the finger.
But if you can’t always blame your last meal, who should you blame? It turns out there’s a pretty big window of opportunity, depending on what exactly made you sick. Norovirus will live in your body for 1 to 3 days before you show symptoms; that time is known as the incubation period. Campylobacter, common in poultry, takes 2-5 days. Clostridium perfringens may strike the same day, within 8-16 hours. E. coli takes up to three days, although the nastier forms may take as long as a week. Salmonella is another quick one, striking in as little as 6 hours or up to 2 days. And then Listeria (which is mild in adults but can cause miscarriage or stillbirth if a pregnant woman contracts it) will cause stomach-bug symptoms within the first few days but show its more serious complications weeks later.
To keep from perpetuating that fecal-oral route, be aware of the germs you’re probably spraying all over your bathroom. If you can isolate yourself from family or roommates, do that–for example, now would be a good time for your kid to spend the night at Grandma’s.
In the meantime, wipe up any stray bodily fluids, wash your hands (and make sure anyone remaining in the house washes their hands if they’ve been near you or things you’ve touched), and as soon as you’re feeling up to it, clean up any potentially contaminated surfaces with bleach.
One of the common complications from food poisoning is dehydration, so drink water and consider other liquids when you’re ready, like Gatorade or ginger ale or soup. It’s normal to not feel like eating for a day or two. You may want to ease back into eating with simple, bland foods like crackers.
It’s impossible to fully protect yourself from food poisoning, but you can improve your chances by cooking and handling food properly. Spoiled leftovers may not always taste or smell bad, so the rule there is “When in doubt, throw it out.”
Cook food properly. Temperature is a better gauge than color when you’re working with meat. Keep raw meats separate from cooked foods, and don’t let anything sit in the “danger zone” for more than two hours. That’s the temperature range in between fridge temperature and piping hot. Fully cooking food will kill bacteria and inactivate many bacterial toxins, so it’s a good rule of thumb for making sure food is safe to eat–but if you suspect a food has gone bad already, reheating it won’t guarantee it’s safe. That’s because a few toxins, like the ones from Staphylococcus aureus, can survive cooking.
The worst food poisoning I ever had was a few days after returning from a weekend vacation with friends. When I finally dragged myself out of the bathroom, an email was waiting for me: “Is everybody else feeling okay? I know our dinner together was a few days ago so I’m sure it’s not that, but I just wanted to check.”
We never found out what food was the culprit, but there was only one meal we all shared and every adult there came down with vomiting and diarrhea about two days later. That’s classic food poisoning. But sometimes the situation is less clear. How do you know when you have food poisoning versus a run-of-the-mill stomach bug, and what should you do about it?
The truth is, there’s no medical difference between “food poisoning” and other diarrheal illnesses. The same germs that cause food poisoning are also common causes of stomach flu or traveler’s diarrhea.
In all of these cases, some virus or bacterium, or perhaps even a parasite, took the fecal-oral route from (sorry) somebody’s butt into your mouth. From the germ’s point of view, it’s a wonderful way to travel: you get eaten, trigger the person’s body to spew from either or both ends, then do your best to stick to surfaces that they or somebody else might touch.
Norovirus is a master at this game: in 2009, a passenger threw up on an airplane, and a flight attendant immediately cleaned up the mess. Over the next week, half of the flight attendants who worked on that plane got sick. In another case, members of a soccer team ate snacks from sealed bags that had been in the bathroom with a sick teammate. Investigators think that droplets containing the virus settled on the bags, and the other players got the virus onto their hands while eating. Call it food poisoning or a stomach bug–either way, they got sick.
Other organisms follow a similar route, but usually not with such ruthless efficiency. Maybe some fecal bacteria from the farm (say, E. coli) got onto some beef and into a grinder, and from there spread to several packages of hamburger meat. You leave the meat out too long–maybe in a cooler at a picnic that wasn’t as cool as it should have been–and the bacteria multiply. Then you cook the burger, but not all the way since you like them rare. Your immune system kills off most of the bacteria, but not quite enough. The bacteria make a toxin that makes you sick. Mission completed.
If you ate with friends and all of you come down with vomiting or diarrhea at the same time, there’s a good chance there was something wrong with that meal. But sometimes you can’t track it down so neatly and it’s hard to know where exactly the culprit came from.
Intuition is bad at helping us track down the source of food poisoning. People who get sick are likely to think back to their last meal or two, especially if it came from a sketchy restaurant. In truth, our biases probably influence where we point the finger.
But if you can’t always blame your last meal, who should you blame? It turns out there’s a pretty big window of opportunity, depending on what exactly made you sick. Norovirus will live in your body for 1 to 3 days before you show symptoms; that time is known as the incubation period. Campylobacter, common in poultry, takes 2-5 days. Clostridium perfringens may strike the same day, within 8-16 hours. E. coli takes up to three days, although the nastier forms may take as long as a week. Salmonella is another quick one, striking in as little as 6 hours or up to 2 days. And then Listeria (which is mild in adults but can cause miscarriage or stillbirth if a pregnant woman contracts it) will cause stomach-bug symptoms within the first few days but show its more serious complications weeks later.
To keep from perpetuating that fecal-oral route, be aware of the germs you’re probably spraying all over your bathroom. If you can isolate yourself from family or roommates, do that–for example, now would be a good time for your kid to spend the night at Grandma’s.
In the meantime, wipe up any stray bodily fluids, wash your hands (and make sure anyone remaining in the house washes their hands if they’ve been near you or things you’ve touched), and as soon as you’re feeling up to it, clean up any potentially contaminated surfaces with bleach.
One of the common complications from food poisoning is dehydration, so drink water and consider other liquids when you’re ready, like Gatorade or ginger ale or soup. It’s normal to not feel like eating for a day or two. You may want to ease back into eating with simple, bland foods like crackers.
It’s impossible to fully protect yourself from food poisoning, but you can improve your chances by cooking and handling food properly. Spoiled leftovers may not always taste or smell bad, so the rule there is “When in doubt, throw it out.”
Cook food properly. Temperature is a better gauge than color when you’re working with meat. Keep raw meats separate from cooked foods, and don’t let anything sit in the “danger zone” for more than two hours. That’s the temperature range in between fridge temperature and piping hot. Fully cooking food will kill bacteria and inactivate many bacterial toxins, so it’s a good rule of thumb for making sure food is safe to eat–but if you suspect a food has gone bad already, reheating it won’t guarantee it’s safe. That’s because a few toxins, like the ones from Staphylococcus aureus, can survive cooking.
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