Kids Health - Food Poisoning

Food poisoning comes from eating foods that contain germs like bad bacteria or toxins, which are poisonous substances. Bacteria are all around us, so mild cases of food poisoning are common. You may have had mild food poisoning — with diarrhea and an upset stomach — but your mom or dad just called it a stomach bug or stomach virus.

What Is Food Poisoning?

 You might think the solution is to get rid of all the bacteria. But it isn't possible and you wouldn't want to do it, even if you could. Bacteria are all around us, including in food, and sometimes they can be good for you. It's confusing, but one thing is for sure — the bacteria in the rotten leftovers weren't good for you. But you can learn how to avoid those bad germs in food.

Symptoms of food poisoning depend on the type of contaminant and the amount eaten. The symptoms can develop rapidly, within 30 minutes, or slowly, worsening over days to weeks. Most of the common contaminants cause:

• nausea
• vomiting
• diarrhea
• abdominal cramping
• fever

Usually food poisoning is not serious, and the illness runs its course in 24-48 hours.

Which Germs Are to Blame?

Foods from animals, raw foods, and unwashed vegetables all can contain germs that cause food poisoning. The most likely source is food from animals, like meat, poultry (such as chicken), eggs, milk, and shellfish (such as shrimp).

Some of the most common bacteria are:

• Salmonella (say: sal-meh-nel-uh)
• Listeria (say: lis-teer-ee-uh)
• Campylobacter (say: kam-pe-low-bak-ter)
• E. coli (say: ee kole-eye)

To avoid food poisoning, people need to prepare, cook, and store foods properly.

Do I Have Food Poisoning?

Someone who has food poisoning might:

• have an upset stomach (called nausea, say: naw-zee-uh)
• have stomach cramps
• have diarrhea (say: dy-uh-ree-uh), which may contain blood
• have a fever

Sometimes feeling sick from food poisoning shows up within hours of eating the bad food. At other times, someone may not feel sick until several days later. With mild cases of food poisoning, you will not feel sick for very long and will soon be feeling fine again.

It can be hard to tell if you have food poisoning or something else. You might do a little detective work and see who else gets the same sickness. Did they eat the same thing you did? If only people who ate that food got sick, food poisoning could be the problem.

It's one thing to get food poisoning from something in your fridge, but imagine how many people could get sick if a restaurant served food that had these bad germs in it. When that happens, people from the health department might get involved and try to figure out what happened and make sure everyone gets the medical care they need.