Susan Hansen, Extension Educator, Colfax County
Flu or food-borne illness? Both afflictions can cause diarrhea, fever and vomiting. Joint and muscle aches may be an additional symptom with food-borne illness.
Dehydration is a danger with food-borne illnesses such as staph intoxication and salmonellosis. Those at particular risk are the individuals who are both vomiting and have diarrhea, the elderly, the very young and those with immune compromises. Extreme dehydration may lead to death.
To avoid dehydration while ill from a food-borne illness, individuals must drink fluids, even though they might not stay down. The fluids replace those that are lost and help move the microorganisms out of the body, toward a quicker recovery.
Food-borne illness usually occurs from food that has been left out at room temperature for longer than two hours or is undercooked. Foods that must be thoroughly cooked are chicken, ground meat and eggs. However, beef steaks and roasts can be safely eaten when cooked to medium rare.
Once microorganisms start to grow, they multiply quickly. The number of cells doubles every twenty minutes. They may not seem like much but use your math skills to see that after a few hours at room temperature, there are a lot of microorganisms that can cause a food-borne illness.
A food-borne illness depends on the dose of microorganisms consumed, but in typical food-borne illness outbreaks, about one-third of the people eating high numbers of these invisible, odorless cells will become ill. Healthy individuals may have enough acid in their digestive systems or an immune system that inhibits microbial action.
Food-borne illnesses develop at various rates. For example, staph intoxication typically occurs 4 to 8 hours after eating tainted food; salmonellosis occurs 30 to 48 hours afterward; and symptoms of Hepatitis A (which occurs from improper hand washing) may take up to six weeks to develop.
Leftovers must be reheated to 165 degrees F to destroy any microorganisms that may have contaminated the food. However, reheating cannot destroy extremely high numbers of cells present in tainted food, resulting in illness.
Many cases of food-borne illness is caused from food eaten away from home. This includes restaurants, catered events, pot luck dinners and picnics. For a restaurant to be suspected of food-borne illness, two or more unrelated people eating the same food must be confirmed by health officials.
Individuals who suspect a food-borne illness should contact either the restaurant where they ate or health officials. Callers are asked questions to help pinpoint the cause. Callers sometimes are surprised to discover it was the food in their own homes that made them sick, not food eaten away from home.
Even though food-borne illness can make an individual extremely ill, it is best to contact either the restaurant, doctor or health department while you are still sick. The sooner the incident is reported, the easier it is to collect samples of either the suspected food or from the individual, and determine the cause.
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