Story: I started having digestive problems - gas and nausea - a few weeks ago. The only thing I want is comfort food, which means I was eating a certain company’s entrees (should I say who?) every day. This was about the time these meals were getting hard to find. My brain threw out the idea that maybe something was wrong at their factory, and maybe the reason I was sick was due to food poisoning.
So, I stopped eating them. I started feeling better after a couple of days of not eating those items.
Fast forward to today. I started feeling bad again, with the thoughts: “Wow, I feel like I did a couple of weeks ago. It’s almost like I ate more of that one brand. Wait, who made the food I had for lunch yesterday?” Sure enough, it was the brand in question.
So, I think maybe they have an outbreak of something causing food poisoning at one of their factories, or one of their suppliers (everything was either chicken or turkey, but that’s the only common thread)
The CDC isn’t going to be interested in what you think might be food poisoning. What you’d need to do is go to your doctor/ER/Urgent Care/Etc and explain how you feel and what you suspect. If they also suspect food poisoning (though, TBH, I have a feeling they’ll just tell you to stop eating that food), they test you for it. If it comes back positive, they’re going to ask you a million questions about every.single.thing you’ve eaten over the past week or so and send that off to your local heath department.
If there really is an outbreak or a problem with a local/regional/national brand, the health department or FDA will find it that way.
Having said all that, it doesn’t seem like that’s going to be the case. If you got food poisoning from something you ate a few weeks ago, it’s unlikely the same toxins would still be showing up in it now and there likely would have already been a recall on it. Google it and see if you come up with anything. I think the FDA has a page that lists all the past recalls).
Also, IME, food poisoning is more of a ‘I’m going to die’ feeling than it is ‘this gave me a stomachache’ feeling and if it tended to come on the same day, it’s more likely to be a sensitivity or allergy than poisoning which, on average, usually takes 1-3 days make you aware of it’s presence.
EDIT: And, just to reiterate (because I’m in the food service business) before you accuse a company of giving you food poisoning make sure you actually have it. I’ve had people tell them my business gave them food poisoning and I’ve had to explain to them there’s a big difference between not feeling well and being diagnosed by a doctor with an actual foodborne illness, which itself is different from not having a test and the doctor saying you have ‘foodborne illness like symptoms’. From my POV (running a food business), saying in public that so and so gave you a foodborne illness without a positive test is like arresting someone on murder charges without a body.
Trying to link a brand with food poisoning instead of a specific entree is questionable. If you have acute or ongoing GI issues, a workup to include stool cultures may be indicated. Discovery of a food-borne pathogen would then prompt subsequent steps, possibly including state/local health department notification.
I think you probably are sensitive, allergically speaking to something in the ingredients.
I’m gonna say this next thing knowing I’ll get blowback:
MSG bothers me. I get digestive symptoms from the mouth down. I avoid it at all costs. Check and watch out for it.
But really it could be any ingredient in those meals.
My mid-Daughter is sensitive to caramel coloring in food and drink stuffs.
They used to tell you to eliminate foods and start over to figure out what a child was allergic or sensitive to, when they started eating solid food. I realize that’s kinda hard as an adult.
Simplify and keep notes.
Good luck.
Joey P is 100% correct. Before you report anything you need to get to a doctor or clinic to determine if you actually have food poisoning. Once you get the test results from the doctor they will either inform the appropriate health agency or they can give you direction on how to do it yourself.
You can google typical symptoms, but generally they include vomiting and diarrhea. To further agree with Joey P, it doesn’t sound like you have food poisoning, but rather you’ve maybe developed some sensitivity to one of the ingredients in the comfort food you’re eating.
Your post reminded me of a very close friend of mine who, completely out of the blue, developed a sensitivity to dairy products in his early 50’s. Discomfort, gas, nausea etc. Tests ruled out food poisoning and he was told to eliminate one food group at a time. As soon as he eliminated dairy he was fine. If he has even a bite of cheese his symptoms return. Not saying you have a dairy issue, but maybe something else.
I remember years ago someone said she got food poisoning from my food. She absolutely refused to go to a doctor and just continued to say she got it from my food. And, she was practically on the toilet within minutes of eating it. Which, again, means it’s not likely to be my food.
In any case, she did call the health dept, which triggers and inspection and while I was talking to the inspector, he mentioned that she wasn’t likely to have it. He said that if an employee has it and it and introduces it into the food, they expect to get 10 or 50 or 100 reports, if no one has it and it was in something we bought (ie chopped romaine, cooked chicken etc), they’d be seeing hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands of reports on a regional or national level.
In this case, it was only her, and she was never tested.
If you ate a company’s entrees every day, that doesn’t sound like food poisoning; it’s more like dietary intolerance.
There are incidences that I attributed to food poisoning which, in retrospect, I now conclude to be intolerance to spices and certain ingredients. Indian curry and cayenne pepper spices are examples of spices that I love and used to tolerate well, regardless of the spice level. But over the years, my gut has found them harder to process. People can develop intolerance with age. For some, it’s spices; for others, it’s sugar and salt.
It also depends on specific ingredients and recipes that may be unique to each company. Some brands may have formulas that just don’t agree with your gut. That’s why I no longer Taco Bell, despite loving their menu. After shitting my brains out during grad school finals week, I realized that my relationship with the Bell was over. I’d been having off-and-on problems with their food items since my first year in college, which was some 15 years prior to that last episode. And yet, I can still eat Mexican and Tex Mex no problem elsewhere. I’ve never had a problem with McDonald’s, BK’s, Wendy’s, or any other fast food joint.
I’d also agree that food poisoning has to be documented by medical professionals. There’s no way to document food poisoning unless they can find out which pathogen they’re dealing with, and they can only get that through lab results.
Some people are convinced that MSG isn’t a problem, but it is a well-known migraine trigger. It goes by a lot of different names, so I’ve given up entire categories of food because they’re likely to contain MSG and you can’t always tell from the label. It’s not obvious, like other allergens. I feel nauseated and bloated and gross, which could be similar to food poisoning symptoms.
Since you and @Beckdawrek have started to hijack this one:
To be clear on this: Science is 100% convinced MSG is NOT a problem. Your statement should read that “In spite of all the scientific and medical evidence to the contrary, some people still think it’s a problem.,…”
When I worked at a retail coffee shop, we’d sometimes have someone call to report how sick they got today after eating something from us yesterday. I’d call the owner to report it and he’d ask if anyone else called about it. Nope and so it either wasn’t food poisoning or it wasn’t from us.
GMANCANADA Don’t tell me what to post. That’s rude. If you want to preach about how MSG is totally harmless, that’s all on you. Don’t demand that other people do it for you.
This is not a hijack. We’re sharing experiences we’ve had that have symptoms that are similar to food poisoning.
MSG might be safe for most people, but it does cause migraines. Many legitimate medical websites list MSG as a migraine trigger, along with other usually harmless foods like chocolate, cheese, and wine.
Your reading comprehension sucks. You should work on that.
I always find it interesting when someone will call and tell me they got a turkey sandwich, pasta salad and cookies and say that they got food poisoning from the cheese on the sandwich or the mayo in the pasta salad or some other item. Now, ignoring that they bought the food 20 minutes ago, ate it 15 minutes ago and were on the toilet 10 minutes ago, which means they probably don’t have food poisoning, or at least not from my food, my question is that of everything on the sandwich, all the ingredients in the pasta salad and cookies…how do you know which specific thing made you sick?
The best answer I got is that people tend to blame whatever they can taste when they start burping or puking. I guess that makes sense.
In any case, in those situations (ate my food, got sick 5 minutes later), I usually try to explain that if you really do have food poisoning it’s not what you just ate, it’s probably something you ate yesterday or the day before and I always strongly encourage them to go see a doctor. Oddly enough, some of them will ‘threaten’ to go to the doctor. I think they think that by saying that I’ll offer them something. For example ‘no no no, that’s not necessary, why don’t you stop in and I’ll give you a hundred bucks for your trouble’. It doesn’t work that way. Get tested, get diagnosed, prove it was from my store (the health department will work with you on that) and I’ll put our insurance company in contact with you.
But, to be clear, nothing will happen without a diagnoses of an actual foodborne illness. That is, a sample sent to a lab confirming you have it. Your doctor, telling you over the phone, that your symptoms are ‘foodborne illness like’ doesn’t cut it. That’s like me going over to your house and then calling you 10 minutes later because I have a fever and a cough so clearly you gave me covid-19.
The main thing people blamed at the coffee shop were the self-serve pitchers of milk & half&half. Granted, they were not particularly appetizing looking but, on the other hand, those were the foods shared by the most people of all. And milk doesn’t really go bad that fast, especially in the stainless, vacuum insulated ones we used.
Actual food borne illness is pretty uncommon. We never had a real case and most restaurants never do, either.
I’m not telling you what to post, but hijacking a good legitimate question on FOOD POISONING with a discussion on whether MSG causes migraines and light-headedness is very rude to the OP.
If you want debate MSG my suggestion is that you reopen the thread that I linked to and discuss it there, don’t hijack this one.
A friend of mine has a huge family that gets together each year for thanksgiving dinner. They rent a facility and all the older women bring their turkeys, with a turkey feeding each table and 8-10 tables total.
One year all the people at one of the tables became violently ill an hour or so after their meal. Several of the ill diners were hospitalized. The only two things they all had in common were sitting at the same table and eating the same turkey.
The grandma who sat at the head of the table, and cooked the turkey, was shocked, shocked, I tell you at how rapidly the flu spread amongst those at her table.
