As for the OP, most like she’s intolerant to an ingredient used by that company, most likely a dye or preservative.
No thanks for spoiling the story which Jackmanii was so careful not to and which I was planning on reading. Please use the spoiler tags next time with a warning.
This 100 times.
There’s a big difference between food sensitivity and food poisoning. Complaining about a food sensitivity is not going to get you anywhere.
Food sensitivity (which I suffer with, pain, bloating, nausea etc) has nothing to do with the manufacturer or retailer. It’s your gut, not their negligence.
I’ve also had one experience of true food poisoning. It was 20 years ago and I wanted to die. Until you’ve had either salmonella or an ecoli infection, calling a bit of abdominal discomfort food poisoning is going to get you laughed out of whichever agency you report it to.
I had one experience with food poisoning, and it wasn’t a big deal. I had a little vomiting and diarrhea which resolved in a few hours. The only reason I know it was food poisoning is that someone collected data, and everyone who ate the chicken at that gathering of about 200 people had the same symptoms.
Like any other illness, the severity of food poisoning can vary. And some of the other attendees got sicker than I did.
But I agree that the OP’s symptoms sound more like a sensitivity.
I will repeat.
The reason I think it was a food poisoning and not a food sensitivity is because it took 24 hours to manifest. As I understand it, and in my experience food allergies take at most a couple of hours to cause problems.
FTR, I did have diarrhea, but when my symptoms are:
Diarrhea, which is annoying
Nausea for most if not all of the day, at times bad enough to make it hard to work
Gas episodes which cause pain spiking up to level 5 or 6…
I tend to forget about the diarrhea.
Also, given that many time on the straight dope medical people have said “If you think you had a 24-hour flu, you probably had food poisoning”, I think that those of you who say “It’s only food poisoning if it’s really horrible and puts you in the hospital” are not considering that if an illness can be really bad, then it can also be mild. From the Mayo clinic:
“Most often, food poisoning is mild and resolves without treatment”
Symptoms: (Mayo clinic says “one or more”)
Nausea
Vomiting
Watery or bloody diarrhea
Abdominal pain and cramps
Fever
But, you know, all this really doesn’t matter right now. I’m not going to eat Stouffers for at least 6 months, in case there is a problem at their facilities. I will probably tell them about the problems I’ve had, but they seem to be having problems of their own, because the stores don’t seem to be getting their product. And none of my other frozen meals have caused a problem, the nausea and gas have gone away, so I’m good for now.
Sounds to me like in that instance, you’re more likely to pick up a bug from all the people handling the container, than food poisoning from the contents.
If a food manufacturer has a food hygiene issue, you won’t be the only person to have suffered, not by a long shot. There would be food recalls being reported in the papers, I would expect. If not, then it sounds like a food intolerance, which can manifest in many ways.
I once ate a Burger King breakfast sandwich and coffee, then became acutely ill with vomiting and abdominal pain. I called Burger King and spoke with the manager. After I told him what had happened, he asked if I had coffee and I said indeed I had. He told me it was the cream, they had other cases that morning, and he offered me a coupon for some free food.
But, I drink my coffee black. Turns out it was a gallbladder attack after the fatty meal.
You’re lucky you didn’t get liver damage.
Being from Louisiana, I used to eat raw ‘ersters’ and never think anything of it until recently when my mother revealed my old man (deceased for a while now) had liver damage before I was born because of raw oysters.
Apparently, they can cause hepatitis. Hadn’t even crossed my mind. And here I was all this time worried about alcohol, lol.
If you’ve had gastrointestinal problems for years, I suspect that this is your culprit. Not that you’ve done anything ‘wrong,’ but that your microbiome may be a little bit out of sorts. This, in turn, would probably make you susceptible to food sensitivities. Any slight variation in ingredients could cause you to become ill from time to time. I’m speaking as someone who has had occasional bouts of gastroenteritis myself, going back to adolescence.
As an example, there was a time when I could not, for the life of me, eat sausage egg McMuffins. This happened when I was about 13, and I had been eating them regularly since I was about 7 or 8 years old. Right around adolescence, though, I would immediate get really, really gassy and head for the toilet within a matter of 1-2 hours, if it took even that long. Surprisingly, I discovered that I can actually eat them now - no idea why. OTOH, I also already explained how I had problems with Taco Bell, which was a regular diet staple on weekends in high school but something I started having problems with my freshman year in college. I still can’t eat that stuff, and I gave up trying.
More recently, I’ve discovered I have problems eating spicy foods - and I love spicy foods. I started having diarrhea after eating certain kinds of Indian and Pakistani dishes - sometimes becoming violently ill, but only for a few hours. I, too, thought ‘Meh, food poisoning.’ But then I noticed that it happened periodically whenever I ate spicy dishes that I cooked, and I’m usually pretty clean with food prep these days (there was a time when I wasn’t and I learned that lesson but good).
I think the 24-hour flu being food poisoning is a little too simplistic an assumption. Food poisoning’s symptoms can strike right away, or they can take a while. Typically, though, if you’ve been infected with the kinds of food poisoning that is present in food processing…you’re not just going to be a little bit sick; you’re going to be horribly, potentially fatally sick. This is because the weaker bacteria that might somehow the processing, packing, and delivery process would probably get killed off by the heat when warming it up. Food contamination of commercial grade products is usually really bad stuff that survives even extreme heat, like e-coli 157 or salmonella. Still, that’s not always true, either, I suppose.
In any case, I think that it’s probably a food intolerance, either due to a change in your body chemistry or because of a minor change they made to their process.
So food sensitivities prevent food poisoning?
What qualifications do you have to make this statement?
And again, you assume that all food poisoning must be severe food poisoning.
Don’t have a gall bladder anymore
How long does it usually take between consuming the food and getting the reaction?
No, not at all. Food sensitivities can present symptoms that mimic food poisoning - that’s the point.
If your gut is out of wack and not producing the right amount of enzymes and good bacteria, then foods that might be fully digested without incident by 18 or 19 out of 20 people will still give you problems. You’ll be that 1 in 20 (or 1 in 100?) who can’t process it well. But it’s not food poisoning per se; however, in a sense, it’s still toxic to your body. Each person has a different microbiome.
I read the internet: admittedly, that’s my only qualification.
That, and just life experience.
Take it for what it’s worth. 
Problems with food sensitivity, for me, can show up within an hour or two (abdominal pain and/or an urgent need to visit the toilet) and cause issues for a day or so, especially bloating. Rarely nasusea, thank goodness. I really hate feeling nauseous.
The only time I am fairly certain I ate something which was contaminated, was at lunch I had some sort of shrimp from the hot buffet and that evening I threw up. Before then I hadn’t thrown up in more than 20 years. That was more than 5 years ago and I still can’t handle whole shrimp, but they’re okay in potstickers, for example.
And I’m going off of my experience with my body, and reading the internet, especially the SD.
I’ve had food poisoning and I have a couple of food sensitivities. I don’t automatically assume any nausea is from food poisoning, I look at what has happened recently. I look at how long it takes to manifest. And I don’t make any positive statements until it’s happened multiple times.
My friend who is sensitive to chicken and corn doesn’t react right away – it took about a day, and could last for as long as a week. That’s one of the reasons it was really hard for her to pin down the problem.
But to answer your question, I think you missed your window to report potential food poisoning to the CDC. I think you do that by going to a doctor, and generally giving a stool sample that they can test for common food-borne pathogens. Then, if you test positive for one, your doctor reports that to the CDC.
It couldn’t hurt to email stouffer your data. They likely get reports from customers who think there is a problem, and if they see a pattern I assume they would investigate.