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chinese-food
Taelor Yoder asked 1 year ago
Hi mark, I had some pot stickers and orange chicken from a local Chinese-American restaurant and I had it delivered to my house. Not even two hours later I had an upset stomach and tried to sleep it off. Work up about a few hours later after tossing and turning from the pain to having horrible diarrhea ongoing for 12 hours now and I threw up 1 time. It’s all yellow liquid but I’ve completely emptied my stomach now. Do you think this restaurant made a slip up in how it was cooked or prepped? And would you call this Food born illness
Mark Staff answered 1 year ago
Greetings, Taylor
Thank you for an interesting question.
Defining the cause of food borne illness is not easy. However, I can provide information that may provide some clues in your case.
Food-borne illness can be broadly classified into two classes-infections and intoxications. I provide an interesting example in Parts 1, 2, and 3 of my blog post.
Infections – The time of onset and the symptoms of food-borne Infections can widely vary, even among individuals who have eaten the same contaminated food. The reason is that a food-borne infection is caused when pathogenic microbes (e.g., Salmonella or hepatitis virus) grow in our bodies; and since all of our bodies are different (e.g., host defense and immune systems), the time of the onset of food-borne infection and the symptoms that we experience may vary. In general, the time for onset of food-borne infection symptoms occurs between six hours and to weeks. Symptoms widely vary, and include vomiting, diarrhea, cramps, and flu-like symptoms.
Intoxications – Food-borne intoxications are caused by toxins produced by pathogenic microbes, not directly by the microbe itself. Unlike food borne infections, the time of onset and the symptoms varies less among affected persons. Examples are staph (staphylococcus) toxin, Bacillus cereus toxin, and botulinum toxin. Staph and Bacillus cereus toxins can produce explosive diarrhea and vomiting as early as four hours.
In your case, you could have had a food-borne illness but it is also possible that your symptoms were the result of another non-food cause, such as norovirus.
If you did have a food-borne illness, it may have been caused by food that you ate the previous one to three days.
I hope this information is useful. If you have further questions, please feel free to contact me.
Mark
