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The Hidden Dangers of Foodborne Illness: A Personal Tale · Talking FACS

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  Welcome to Talking FACS, what you need to know about family,
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  food, finance, and fitness.
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  This nationally recognized, award-winning podcast is hosted by the University
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  of Kentucky Family and Consumer Sciences Extension Program.
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  Our educators share research knowledge with individuals, families,
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  and communities to improve quality of life.
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  Hello, and welcome to Talking FACS, what you need to know about family,
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  food, finance, and fitness.
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  I'm your host, Mindy McCulley, Extension Specialist for Instructional Support
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  with Family and Consumer Sciences Extension at the University of Kentucky. Welcome, LaToya.
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  Hey. We are talking about foodborne illness today, and for most people, that is food poisoning.
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  Yeah, definitely. Food poisoning, and that's something that we all should be
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  more aware of because it probably happens to us more than we like to acknowledge.
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  You know, sometimes we get a little stomach bug and we think,
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  oh, it's just a little stomach bug. But in actuality- 24-hour flu, right?
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  Yeah, in 24-hour flu, in actuality, you might have ate something that made you sick.
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  And Mindy, boy, do I have a story to tell you all. So tell us.
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  I was so sick. I thought my life was going to come to a premature end.
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  And Lord, I just prayed. I was so excited recently.
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  I had got a scholarship to go to a community development conference in Portland,
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  Oregon, Mindy, and I'd never been before.
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  So I was super pumped to go hear about the work that the extension services
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  in that area was doing to assist folks with food security and how they were
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  helping Native folks out there.
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  I was so excited to go learn about the work of community development and extension in Portland.
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  You just wanted to get there, right? I just wanted to get there.
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  I was so excited to travel there.
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  I was flying by myself and I had a layover in Chicago airport.
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  I flew from our wonderful city of Louisville and I got in Chicago and I said,
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  look at here, I'm going to eat a salad from this vending machine.
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  Somebody who's in nutrition should know better already, but I was like,
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  I'm going to eat this salad now so that can eat and splurge later because I'm
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  a foodie and I like to eat, you know, really rich foods and different types of food.
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  So I was excited. You wanted to have what was local.
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  Yes, I was pumped. So I was like, I'll eat this salad now. Yeah.
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  And I'll save belly and I'll save space.
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  So I ate that salad in the Chicago airport and I ate it. I tore it up.
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  It was delicious. Delicious.
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  It was a bruschetta salad. So it had mozzarella and it had spinach and it had
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  tomato, all these good foods.
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  And I noticed a family across from me, they were eating from the same machine
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  and they were like, this is delicious. So glad we found this gluten-free.
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  So I was like answering them in my head, like, yes, it's so good. Well-
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  Fast forward five hours or so later, as I landed into Portland on the plane,
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  my belly was not cooperating as I thought it should. And we needed to unload this plane.
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  We unloaded this plane and Lord help me.
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  I thought that my world was over. And I had several of those symptoms that are
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  typical of food poisoning.
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  And those symptoms continued in my first Uber ride.
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  I was so pumped. too many by my own uber
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  i had you know sent to me i was getting to the hotel i
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  was really traveling by myself a grown-up oh
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  my gosh this young man had his little tesla uber and my symptoms continue to
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  come on strongly unfortunately i had a blazer i was able to save his car and
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  send myself and he rolled me out at the hotel and drove off quickly and i sat in front
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  of the hotel and laid in front of the hotel and was just like, Lord, just fine.
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  It's fine if I go now. The sun's beautiful. But fortunately,
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  I'm still here. Yes, you are.
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  Terrible case of food poisoning. Terrible case of food poisoning.
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  I had all of the typical symptoms.
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  Well, let's talk about what those typical symptoms are.
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  Yeah, those symptoms can be upset stomach, abdominal cramps,
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  Nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, fever, fatigue,
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  joint or back aches, and some toxins, Mindy, like botulism and other types of
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  toxins, even those from like a staph, right?
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  Those are great. They can cause nervous system effects like headaches and tingling
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  or numbness of the skin. Right.
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  Blurred vision, weakness, dizziness, and even paralysis.
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  So most cases of food poisoning are going to go away, but some of them,
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  those symptoms, they continue to progress.
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  And you can even have bloody diarrhea, diarrhea that lasts several days,
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  a body temperature, frequent vomiting that leads to dehydration,
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  dehydration resulting in parched mouth and a sore throat, dry throat.
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  In severe Severe cases, you can have kidney failure, brain or nerve damage, and chronic arthritis.
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  So fortunately, oh my God. It can be debilitating, right?
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  Debilitating. And I have never been that debilitated in my life where I felt
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  the need to lay on the concrete.
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  But this can even cause serious, even more serious issues than a temporary 24-hour, 48-hour illness.
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  You know, and especially if you're already immune compromised,
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  you want to really pay attention to food safety, right?
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  If you're pregnant, if you're an older person,
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  if you're a young person, you know, a toddler, a baby, or if you have a weakened
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  immune system, you especially want to be considerate of food safety and things
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  that might cause foodborne illness.
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  Right, right. Right. Well, and you are such a fabulous storyteller that you
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  had me enthralled and you had me tickled at your experience,
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  but it really is nothing to laugh about.
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  It is. Nothing to laugh about at all.
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  There's over 250 identified foodborne illnesses that are caused by bacteria, viruses, parasites,
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  fungi, chemicals, or toxins that are produced in whatever it is.
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  So many of them can cause you illnesses.
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  And are there ways that we can prevent.
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  Yes, yes, we can help prevent spreading these illnesses to the best of our abilities.
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  And we can avoid contaminating food with animal or human waste, right?
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  And we want to make sure that we're washing our fresh fruits and vegetables
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  because we want to wash away any, you know, thing that might have been used
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  to build up the soil. We want to wash our hands.
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  Anytime we touch something that could be contaminated, we touch our animals.
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  We want to wash our hands.
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  We always want to be washing our hands. We cannot wash them enough.
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  We want to let you show for 20 seconds or more. And then we want to wash our countertops.
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  We want to wash our food surfaces, our kitchen tools, our knives.
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  We want to make sure that That we're not using the same cutting board for fresh
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  produce as we are with raw meat. We want to use different cutting boards.
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  We don't want to cross contaminate any of our foods.
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  And we want to make sure that we're cooking foods to the correct temperature,
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  depending on what they are.
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  Fish, poultry, we want to cook them properly.
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  You can find out more info about that at where, Mindy?
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  Planeatmove.com or our local extension office. That's right.
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  The big deal, too, is to store them properly and keep them out of the danger zone, right?
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  That's between 40 and 140 degrees.
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  We want to keep them cold. We want to keep cold foods cold and hot foods hot, right?
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  Exactly. We want to clean things, separate them, cook them properly,
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  and chill them when we need to.
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  Well, and this is especially an issue when we're having large gatherings,
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  but we don't want to leave food out.
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  You know no no not longer than two
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  hours we don't want to leave food out we want
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  to get it in the refrigerator or keep it
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  hot if you're hot foods at your holiday gatherings you want to make sure they
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  have a chafer or that they have what is that slow cooker yes uh-huh those hot
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  foods hot you don't want to get your whole family sick unless you do and that's
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  a whole nother issue who wants to take care of them, right?
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  I mean, we don't want you to take anybody out this holiday season.
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  We want everybody safe. Because like we said, there's so many different types of food poisoning.
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  And you know, Mindy, what I think that I had based on the symptoms and when
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  they came on, I think I had a staph infection of food poisoning.
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  And I thought that was so odd because we always think of, we think of rashes, staph.
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  Those same germs can cause toxins in your body to be produced and get you sick
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  when they cross-contaminate foods.
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  When I was sick, I had a dizziness and I was, I had the spins,
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  like, you know, I was on something else, but it was the food and the toxins
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  that were being created in my belly. Dr. Anneke Vandenbroek
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  And it is not a pleasant situation. If you have ever had true foodborne illness,
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  you will never forget it.
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  Never will I ever forget this in my life. And you will never forget it.
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  I always think about that movie scene in a movie you guys might have seen where
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  one person is relieving herself in the street.
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  And I was like, how could that ever happen?
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  I understand how that could happen. Yeah, you get it. Yeah, I get it.
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  Lord. Yeah, it is a not a pleasant situation to ever be in.
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  So if you can avoid it, we recommend that you do so at all costs and take all
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  precautions to prevent so that you are protecting yourself and your family from
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  all situations of foodborne illness.
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  Right. Well, LaToya, thanks so much for your time today. I know that this has
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  been an enlightening discussion for many people.
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  I hope enjoyable too. And I hope to make somebody laugh. Well,
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  we're sorry that you had to experience it, but I hope that your experience will
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  keep others from having to go through it as well. Definitely, me too.
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  For those who are just tuning in, you're listening to Talking FACS and you
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  can find us wherever you find your favorite podcasts.
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  Thank you for listening to Talking FACS. We deliver programs focusing on nutrition,
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  Music.