Food poisoning is an acute gastroenteritis caused by the consumption of a food material or a drink, which contains the pathogenic microorganisms or their toxins or any type of poisonous chemical substances. The incidence of food poisoning is common among hostels, hotels, communal feedings, and during festival seasons.

Food poisoning results when you eat food contaminated with bacteria or other pathogens such as parasites or viruses. Your symptoms may range from upset stomach to diarrhea, fever, vomiting, abdominal cramps and dehydration. Most such infections go undiagnosed and unreported.

Food poisoning is most commonly caused by bacteria, parasites, or viruses that may be present in the food that you have eaten. You may have heard the names of many of these organisms. They include Escherichia coli (E coli), Campylobacter jejuni, Clostridium botulinum, Shigella, Salmonella, Staphylococcus aureus, Trichinella, and Hepatitis A virus, just to name a few.

With my busy schedule I often find myself eating out more than I should. The convenience is great but the risks could be plentiful. It all comes down to the lack of control. When we are cooking in our own kitchen it's easy to cautious about food preparation and handling. But in restaurants this process is usually in the hands of someone we don't know.

Sometimes, people who get poisoned by food do not have control over whether they get poisoned or not. Specifically, if someone eats something at a restaurant and gets sick, the restaurant may be at fault. The chefs may not have cooked the food completely.

How to Prevent Food Poisoning:

1- Make sure that you keep all of your hot foods hot and your cold food cold.

2- Be sure that you don't eat any meat, dressings, or salads, or any other food for that matter that has been left out for more than two hours between the temperatures of 40 degrees F and 140degrees F. This is called the 20-40-140 rule.

3-Make sure that the temperature in your refrigerator stays between 34 and 40 Degrees F. You can be assured of this by using a thermometer.

Beyond actually trying to neutralize the poison many common foods and herbs can become a remedy for food poisoning. A banana after food poisoning can go a long way in replacing the body with the potassium that has been leeched from the system. To sooth the digestive system that has been recently ravaged, a good mint tea is recommended as the tannin in tea will help neutralize any remaining poison and the mint calms the stomach.

Signs of food poisoning may range from mild to life threatening. Vomiting, fever, diarrhea, nausea, cramping are all signs of poisoning. Remember you many suffer from only a few of the symptoms or all of the symptoms. Generally symptoms come on withing 48 hours after eating or drinking the contaminated foods/drinks.

Preventing Shigella is easy if one practices consistent personal hygiene by washing hands thoroughly and keeping bathroom and kitchen surfaces free of fecal matter. This can be done by practicing good cleaning methods with common household disinfectants.

The next question is to ask a patient is where did he get the food? We want to know because we want to ask if there are other people who are suffering the same symptoms just because they ate the same food. The where question is also important so that healthy and safety certificates of the establishments should be checked.



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