by Jacqueline Rosser

Created on: June 15, 2010

Food poisoning is miserable.  The symptoms can occur quickly, sometimes within minutes of eating the contaminated food.  Other times they take longer to appear and can progressively worsen over a period of days or even weeks.  Most commonly nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and abdominal cramping are experienced.   In the midst of a bad case of food poisoning it can feel like death is the only solution.  Luckily, food poisoning is generally a short term illness and symptoms often resolve within 24-48 hours.  However, 24 hours of misery is still miserable especially when most cases of food poisoning are preventable. 

Food safety is of critical importance if one is to insure that they will not fall victim to food poisoning.  Food safety requires diligence and awareness.  Often food is contaminated by carelessness and lack of knowledge.  Generally food contaminated food contains pathogens, which are often microscopic organisms that cause disease.  Pathogens can range from bacteria to viruses and can even include spores and fungus.  Food safety is something to be conscious of in every stage of food preparation from purchasing to storage and from preparation to serving.

Pay attention when purchasing foods.  It is possible that foods are contaminated even before purchasing.  Make sure that your grocery store is clean.  Do not purchase refrigerated foods that are not cold to the touch.  Reach for items in the back of the refrigerated case.  These items are generally kept at a more consistent, colder temperature which means they are less likely to have had the opportunity to grow and foster pathogens that can lead to illness.

Use care when placing items in your shopping basket and think of ways to keep foods from contaminating each other.  Do not place uncooked meat products anywhere where they will come in contact with ready to eat foods.  For example, if you place a steak on top of your carrot sticks, juices from the meat or contaminants found on the outside of the meat packaging could transfer to your carrots.  Since carrot sticks are often consumed without cooking, these contaminants could easily transfer to you and could make you very sick.

Remember that pathogens multiply best in the middle of the temperature spectrum.  They have little opportunity to multiply at cold or freezing temperatures as well at very warm temperatures.  The longer a food is sits

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