This is how you recognise food poisoning

Nausea, stomach cramps and a forehead covered in sweat. Each year, around 48 million people get sick as a result of food poisoning in the USA alone. This is usually caused by eating food that has been contaminated with bacteria or mould. You can feel pretty miserable as a result of this. Yet a lot of people don’t immediately realise they’ve got a bout of food poisoning. You can recognise it by these 7 signals.

You can feel pretty miserable when you have food poisoning.

1. Sweating

Contrary to popular belief, food poisoning doesn’t start with taking a sprint to the toilet. One of the first symptoms is sweating. Do you break out in a sweat and are you developing a fever? Try to think back to whether you might have eaten something suspicious over the past few days. Food poisoning is easily confused with the flu.

2. Gas

Stomach cramps and gas are an indication of food poisoning. Often they are accompanied by multiple visits to the toilet. This is a sign that there are active bacteria in your stomach.

3. Nausea and vomiting

Nausea and vomiting are two of the most well-known and common symptoms of food poisoning. However, how soon these symptoms appear depends on the type of bacteria the food in question was contaminated with. The Listeria bacteria, for example, which is mostly found in products like hummus, milk and soft cheeses, can cause symptoms anywhere from three to 70 days after you’ve been exposed to the contaminated food. With salmonella, however, which occurs in eggs, meat and raw vegetables, the symptoms will start after 12 to 72 hours after exposure.

4. Diarrhoea

Diarrhoea is a very common symptom of food poisoning, but how do you know whether your diarrhoea is caused by that or by the flu? You can deduce it by looking at the type of diarrhoea you have. If you have the flu, you’ll have watery diarrhoea. When you have food poisoning, however, you can have bloody diarrhoea. This is caused by the E.coli and Campylobacter bacteria, which are often the culprit when it comes to food poisoning.

Go to the next page to read about the final three signs!

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