Food-borne diseases are the greatest food-related danger you face after poor eating habits. Toxins and infectious agents find their way into our food supply when produce is sprayed with bad water; when sick animals are butchered; or when stores, restaurants, or individuals prepare or store food badly.

With more than 600 food-borne diseases, virtually everything you eat—from fast-food hamburgers to grocery store strawberries—can harbor disease-causing organisms. Throughout the course of human history, tiny food-borne microorganisms have killed more people than all wars and natural disasters combined.

Symptoms of Food Poisoning

When you ingest contaminated food, the microorganisms irritate and inflame the gastrointestinal tract. The most common symptoms of food-borne illness include abdominal pain, diarrhea, and vomiting. In extremely severe cases, illness can progress and lead to high fevers, internal hemorrhaging, kidney failure, and even death.

Illness Time Frame

Food-borne illness can affect one person, or it can occur as an outbreak in a group of people who all ate the same contaminated food. Symptoms of food poisoning can begin in as little as half an hour after ingesting contaminated food.

What can make it difficult to identify a food-borne illness is that some toxins do not cause symptoms for up to 36 hours after ingestion. By then, you may have forgotten what you ate and assume you are coming down with the flu.

Secondary Illnesses

What many people do not realize is that some cases of food-borne illnesses leave something behind. Known as sequela, it is a disease or condition that results from an original disease. Another way of referring to it is a long-term complication. Scientists are just now beginning to understand long-term chronic illness as a characteristic of some food-borne diseases. Food-borne bacteria have been proven to cause arthritic disorders, such as Guillian-Barre Syndrome, meningitis, and hemolytic uremic syndrome, which is often fatal in infants and young children.

Who’s at Risk?

No one is immune to food-borne illness. For example, even if you are in excellent health, undercooked eggs have the potential to make you sick. But some people are at higher risk for food-borne illness, especially older adults, pregnant women, very young children, and people with weakened immune systems.

As such, high risk groups must take extra precautions with their diet. An immune system may be compromised by medical treatments like chemotherapy or by chronic illnesses like AIDS, cancer, diabetes, or liver or kidney disease.

High-risk individuals should not eat:

• Soft-cooked or runny eggs

• Caesar salad dressing

• Hollandaise sauce

• Raw or rare hamburger

• Carpaccio (thin shavings of raw beef fillet)

• Beef or steak tartare

• Raw fish: sushi, sashimi, ceviche, tuna carpaccio

• Raw molluscan shellfish: raw clams, oysters, mussels, scallops

• Refrigerated pâté or meat spreads

• Refrigerated smoked seafood

• Deli salads

• Unpasteurized juices (fruit and vegetable)