Reading this thread http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=471609 I was thinking how lax I’ve been about following common-sense advice about avoiding food poisoning over the years. I eat stuff that’s been sitting at room temperature for hours, eat stuff out of jars that have mold growing on them, eat stuff that dates from whothehellknowswhen, etc. , all pretty consistently for the last four or five decades, and I never seem to suffer for it.
What’s going on here, do you suppose? 1) just phenomenally lucky
I’ve got some sort of resistance to food poisoning
the commonsense warnings actually apply to much rarer circumstances than I suppose (i.e., food is usually okay unless it’s been at room temperature of between 68-72 degrees for over 9 hours)
I’ve been able to ward off problems by heating the food up before eating it.
I do get sick every so often, and it’s sometimes delayed effects of eating food that gone bad.
Example: I ask because I’m leaving on a trip today, and I was trying to clean up my fridge yesterday–I found some foods that looked like ithey would go well together (chicken, tomato sauce, loads of onions, chicken stock, cheese and fresh basil that I needed to trim back before I left)–most of which were fine, but the tomato sauce had some unexpected mold on it, and I couldn’t remember when I’d last made chicken stock (it had a sealing layer of chicken fat on top that looked suspiciously aged). I thought “What the hell!”, scraped the mold off the sauce, threw it all together in casserole, and ate it (it was delicious). Today, I’ve got a clean fridge, and no ill effects.
Did I dodge a bullet, or what? Are “food poisoning” warnings overstated? What’s going on here?
Hard to tell, but I would vote 1) with a little of 4).
Also note, that food poisoning and food spoiling are different processes, but occuring in similar conditions. You can get food poisoning from apparently good food or eat seemingly spoiled food and remain healthy. But it’s always a gamble.
Also note that some molds while not so toxic immediately contains aflatoxins which are quite strong carcinogens.
The OP is very interesting because I often feel the same. Having travelled around the world I’ve eaten some fairly, umm, dodgy looking foods…and food in my backpack that I know has been through the mill…and have nearly always been fine. I pretty much ignore eat-by dates and will eat food that has been left out on the side for a day or so. And I have only once had food poisoning, and that was after eating a pommeganite a child gave me in Thailand which I didnt wash, and then just licked the insides out with my tongue. Even those effects only lasted a day.
So i often wonder if this is just pure luck, or if warnings are just overstated.
I definitely think there’s some innate or exposure-based resistance to certain forms of food poisoning.
I’ve read several tales online of Americans getting food poisoning in France or Italy, neither of which country fazes me at all - but Brits traditionally get sick in Spain.
I’ve had bad food poisoning in Vietnam and China, but never in France or Italy. And my ex got terrible food poisoning in Portugal.
Yet in all these places the locals seem to do just fine. (Either that or they die of food poisoning so you never see the victims.)
Anyone who’s eaten my mother’s cooking for any length of time will have build up some extreme resistance.
She’s frightening with the stuff she’ll put on a plate.
My brother, sister and I could eat broken glass soaked in botulism spores and be just fine.
Did you know chicken should be thawed out on a counter that hasn’t been wiped down in about 5 years? Not on a plate but just throw it on the counter in the morning and it should be good to go by dinner time. And who really knows what the cats were doing all day.
I still get socked with food poisoning from time to time, it’s a hazard of living in Thailand, but the episodes get farther and farther apart. I never go to the doctor for it, though. Just ride it out.
I’m convinced that I have a superior resistance to food poisoning. I’m a scary sloppy housekeeper and have been to all sorts of second and third world countries where I eat from food stalls. I think I ate some spoiled duck and got sick once, but that was also the night of a dopefest where I drank a bit too much.
My best friend in high school was one of those guys who’d eat anything for some $$. Having set his standards low enough that he’d eat a small piece ("1 diameter) of macadem and an eraser for $1.50, you can imagine how low the bar was set for things he’d eat. Never got sick either.
Example #1: One time I left a Ham & Swiss sandwich in my wrestling locker. For 3 days. The locker room is normally about 90-95 degrees fahrenheit. I told him I’d give him $2 if he could eat it. He got 2 bites down, but could eat no more. He never got sick, his stomach just rumbled for about 30-45 minutes afterwards. I gave him the $2 though, he earned it.
Example #2: He used to keep Ice Cream on hand all the time in the summer. But he never refridgerated it. He would keep it under his bed in the summer time and pull it out and eat it like soup. And not just over a period of hours. A lot of times he was pulling out the previous nights half gallon of ice cream, the following afternoon. :eek:
The first time I saw him doing this, I was horrified. But after seeing him do it 10+ times I could only stare in awe.
I think we just over-react in general about food in America. We’ve set so many health standards and heard so many scare stories about food in the news. 150 out of 300+ million people got sick off tomatoes this week. Now everyone’s treating tomatoes like the plague.
I know I’ve done the “cut off the moldy bread/cheese and eat it” before without consequence. The only time I’ve had food poisoning was off some chicken wings which appeared to be perfectly cooked, and I cooked them myself. :rolleyes:
I think the dangers are mostly overstated. I’m not at all paranoid about food safety and have only gotten sick from food once (“voodoo” chicken in Peru–the stomach revolted on that one). Basically I think Americans are generally alarmists about just about everything, and that naturally extends to food.
Remember, in the US, at least, when talking about food poisoning incidents, the majority of the worst victims are people who have compromised immune systems: the elderly, cancer patients, people with lowered liver function, people on anti-rejection drugs. I won’t say that all victims of food poisoning all have that sort of medical background, but in general that’s the description of the at-risk populations.
So, yes, most healthy people will have a good deal of resistance to food poisoning. And, too, a lot of people who contract food poisoning may suffer without ever realizing or being officially diagnosed with the condition. It’s just a cold or a bug, or even “something I ate.” Hell’s bells, that’s my case with the Hep A I got. The only reason that I found out that I’d had the virus was because while getting some bloodwork the PA noticed a blip in my liver function enzymes and so ordered another couple of tests. As far as I was aware, I was totally asymptomatic.
So, I agree with those posters who have said that in the US a lot of people over-react to the idea of food-borne pathogens. But that’s not the same thing as saying that the government is over-reacting with the warnings that they issue: There are significant portions of the population that are at risk to things like a small amount of E. coli contamination. For them it may be a life-or-death situation.
Of course, one can say the same thing about high ninety-degree weather, too - which has killed some 30 people in the US this week. It’s still not going to convince me that A/C is the same need that heating is for the majority of the population.
FWIW, the Subway sandwich I mentioned in the tomato thread that I bought on last Friday and ate on this Monday, that had mayonnaise in it and was in my car all weekend gave me no ill effects. I think the answer is 2.
I think food poisoning is a lot like allergies. The cleaner you try to make your life, the more reactive you’ll be to any irritant. The vast majority of food poisoning is just the body’s reaction to what it’s eating. BUT… some fraction is truly a microbe doing bad things to you. Eg, when you get some nasty disease from shit-contaminated water. Surely you don’t get much resistance to that?
It’s a fine line between toughening up your body to not shit itself over every little piece of mold, while avoiding the dangerous stuff. Anyone know how to walk it?
Your system gets toughened up living in the Third World, but only to a certain extent. I’m under no illusions about what would happen if I happened to drink some cholera-tainted water.
Many water-borne diseases cause no resistance. I used to arrive in a new country, drink a cup of tap water, wait a few days to get sick, ride it out, then think I was resistant for the rest of the trip. Turns out I was totally stupid and ignorant, and the fact I didn’t get life-threateningly ill was just because I was very, very lucky.
A guy I know who had been living in Delhi for a year accidentally swallowed some water in the shower, and ended up in hospital with typhoid and cholera, and something else unpleasant that I can’t remember. He was there for six weeks and very nearly died.
pseudotriton ruber ruber: I’d say a combination of 3, 4, and 2. I also agree with the people who say that we’re entirely too freaked-out about “germs.” Antibiotic everything ultimately only breeds supergerms. After all, you get many of your immunities from exposure to vectors.
You know what grosses me out about my roommate’s green beef the most, is that I can’t believe it tastes good! But she has no sense of taste so I guess she doesn’t know (or doesn’t care).
One thing I’m not clear on: boiling will certainly kill any live pathogens, but what about the toxins they have already produced? Can these be denatured by heat? How much of a threat are they?
