After a small bout this weekend, I want to hear what your horrible food poisoning stories are! Embarrassing? Thrilling? Was it a kitchen ignoring safety protocols or did you trust something that was a little iffy out of the fridge? Let me hear it! I’ll post my own below.
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When I was a kid, working in a mall, there was this french fry place across from us that made AMAZING french fries, with this house made dijon sauce. Just phenomenal.
You could buy a POUND of fries, so the other guys and me on the shift would get a pound and split it.
Except I’d get sick from eating them. Only me, the other guys were fine.
OK, process of elimination…
Fries by themselves? Fine.
Fries w/ ketchup? Fine.
Fries w/ dijon sauce? Horribly sick, puking, the whole bit.Now, you might already know, dijon sauce is made with white wine.
Ok, maybe it’s the alcohol? I don’t drink so… let’s test the theory…
Had A beer. One. Within 30 to 45 minutes I was throwing up everything I had eaten since I was 12. Was sick for 3 days.
Turns out, my liver doesn’t have the enzymes to correctly process alcohol.
Alcohol -> Enzymes -> Acetaldehyde
I have those, Acetaldehyde is what makes you sick when you’re hung over. Cousin to formaldehyde.Acetaldehyde -> Enzymes -> Sugar and water.
Those I’m missing. :(Huh, neat! And by neat I mean, well, not so neat
So sick! Literally
Had A beer. One. Within 30 to 45 minutes I was throwing up everything I had eaten since I was 12. Was sick for 3 days.
Turns out, my liver doesn’t have the enzymes to correctly process alcohol.
Wow, I’ve never heard of that before.
Apparently common in Asians, weird for me not being Asian.
Kicking us off. My worst story was on the day of my wedding. The night before I was drunk with friends in town, and they had never had real seafood before. So I ordered a huge platter of everything. Including, you guessed it, oysters. Now oysters are delicious, and they are usually fine if prepared well. Unfortuately we had just been through a large heatwave, and most of the oysters had spoiled, but no one knew yet. So I slurped a good 4 or 5 of them. Next day was the wedding. I really began to notice right before the ceremony. My (now wife) sent in the best man thinking I had cold feet. He came in, we chatted, he asked if I was alright. I… explained everything and he did what any good best man would do, and laughed. I was able to rally and attend my own wedding, but didn’t enjoy too much of the food the day after.
Turns out - it was Vibrio. I spent the next few days within 30 feet of a toilet at any given time. We weren’t on our honeymoon yet thankfully, but our first few days of marriage were definitely interesting.
LPT: don’t eat oysters the day before your own wedding. or anyone else’s wedding. or ever
Furiously taking notes
Oysters got me too. I went to the ER thinking my appendix was bursting because the stomach cramps were so painful.
I still like the slippy little bastards, but I’m very cautious about where and when I order them now.
Yeah, now I only go to the fancy oyster restaurants. It’s a rarity now because those places are expensive, but I’ve never gotten food poisoning from the places that specialize in them
It doesn’t matter how fancy the place is. Oysters are filter feeders and clean up the water ways of anything and everything. All it takes is a boat to flush its toilet somewhere near the oyster field and the whole lot will be contaminated.
I guess it’s the best indicator because they pick out their own oysters vs just picking any oysters. There’s always a risk, but at least they’re picking and choosing theirs, at least my local place does
My husband and in-laws were taken down by oysters too. Last New Year’s they shucked and ate two trays full between the three of them, and the following day were hugging toilets. We were visiting them in London and had to reschedule our flight home.
Parents were really into hot wings. They kept ordering them hotter and hotter. It got to the point where my eyes would water being in the same room as them, and I have a high tolerance for spicy food. However, I don’t enjoy the texture of wings and usually got something else, and I remember commenting that this time they smelled “off.” My nose is sharp and something smelled unmistakably rotten. They brushed it aside saying it was probably just the new nuclear fission burn the hair off your tits tropical fuck storm flavor or whatever goofy name they were newly trying out. I was feeling nauseous from the odor so I took my food to my room while they plowed through the pile occasionally pausing to exclaim I was missing out.
I woke up to one of them crashing their way through the house to the bathroom in a blind panic. The door slammed shut, the fan whirred to life and I could hear muttering, gasping and cursing and then the lovely sound of their body forcibly ejecting chicken from both ends. “Goddammit what the hell.” And then a request for a bucket. Stepdad staggered out looking pale as a sheet. “I think I need to go to the ER. Feels like I have knives in my stomach.” My Mom hadn’t succumbed yet, it hit her while she was in the waiting room after she drove him there. They were sick for about a week from salmonella and I was freed from their trufflepig chicken snarfing noises for about a year.
This is one of the reasons why I keep a solid trash can in each bathroom (not one of those mesh wire ones). It definitely saves you to have a place to vomit when you’re shitting yourself simultaneously lol. Had an episode of “both ends at once” last year!
Ditto. One bout of shitting the toilet while puking into the bathtub ensured all bathroom trash bins are now 1) solid, and 2) comfortable to bear-hug.
I really appreciated how close the sink was to the toilet in my hotel room during my last bout.
What a picture you painted for us
Unbelievably sick after some seafood at a well-rated place near me.
Dizzy, cramps, shitting.
Stood up after, nauseated. Went to vomit and blacked out, woke up with chipped teeth, bleeding nose, mangled lip, and what would become a black eye whilst lying in a puddle of blood.
Best I can gather is I face planted hard directly onto the edge of the toilet and then the floor. But I honestly don’t know.
Ended up having to go to the ER and getting stitches. Recovery for non drinkable foods was some 1-2 weeks.
Have scars from it.
My mother made rice in the morning and forgot to put it in the fridge, it was a hot summer day.
When my brother came back from school he decided to eat the rice, not knowing how long it was out. A few bites in he notes the odd taste, nothing major but noticeable, his solution? Add more sauce to drown the weird taste!
Fast forward about an hour, now my brother is puking and shitting it and everything else that was inside of him. So far this is pretty normal right? It can happen to anyone at least once and it wasn’t anything crazy since after one puking/shitting session he felt better and was mostly over it.
About 2 hours later my father comes home, this man does not throw away food as long as it isn’t covered in mold (this means that small amounts of mould are okay to cut out and eat the rest, thia is the level we are talking about) and just to clarify, we had no food shortage or money issues, he is just unwilling to throw away food.
For some reason nobody threw away the rice yet and it was still on the kitchen counter. My father sees the rice and we all immediately warn him that my brother got food poisoning from it and he should not eat it, of course my father, the genius, decides that my brother just has a weak stomach. He takes a bite, notices the weird taste and you guessed it… Drowns it in sauce!
As expected about an hour later he had a similar puking/shitting session, and learned absolutely nothing.
“Fried rice syndrome” is a thing. Room temp rice is a good place for the bacteria to grow and it’s heat resistant. Once in your guts it continues to grow on food in there too.
Bro wtf your dad is crazy lmao. Does your mom often leave things out like that? Myom will leave food out for hours after it is cooked and it will really bother me. She gets annoyed when I am always offering to put stuff in the fridge because “it’s still warm” and “I’ve been cooking for 50 years”. I don’t fuck around with food safety.
I was in Jamaica and my friend and I bought mangoes from a Rasta. We went down to the beach to eat them but I saved some for the next morning. Unfortunately I forgot to put them in the fridge and they sat out over night. Dumb me didn’t realize at the time and I ate them for breakfast. Everything was fine up until this point but thing was I was flying back home in a few hours. Right before I got on my first flight it hit me. I managed to be calm and hold it but it was rough. Landing back in the states and waiting to go through customs was awful and once I got through I let it all free. I was in so much pain and discomfort waiting for the next flight and once we got on there were plane troubles and we had to get off and walk across the airport to our new gate. I had to use the bathroom every 20 minutes between this, had bad cramps and nausea. Luckily I was able to sleep through my next flight because I was so exhausted after all that. I’ve had some bugs before but this was the worse. All from my favorite fruit too.
Oh my god this is legit a nightmare of mine. I can’t believe you made it! Congrats for powering through customs, by twisted insides feel for you!
Woke up with my stomach in knots, figured I ate something bad the previous day. Texted my work group chat and let them know that I would be useless if I showed up, and explained that I think I ate something bad for dinner. They said something along the lines of “no worries, but you’re still gonna have to come in to at least grab the paperwork for staying home for a day.” Annoyed, I got a ride to work and went to go do the formalities and explained that my boss had already given me the go ahead to stay home, I just needed the paperwork. First guy I talked to had no issue just writing it up and sending me on my way, but when he stepped away for a second I got asked some questions by one of his coworkers who told me “we have to give you a check up first to determine if you actually have to stay home.” She checked my stomach for pain and listened to it make some noises, then decided I was just constipated and gave me something to drink to help. First guy still wrote the paperwork up for me, and I got to go home, stomach in even worse situation and I spent nearly 2 hours on the toilet before I felt safe enough to go lay down and slept the rest of the day away.
(And yes I’m well aware that it’s atypical to get a checkup by your workplace, this was a weird and terrible place to work. Glad I got outta there.)
Wow, they suck. Also weird to have to come in to take a sick day.
In high school we were hosting a marching band competition for schools a little smaller than ours. The band students helped work the whole event, so we were outside running around the football field all day.
Eventually, we got to lunch, and myself and friends ran over to Arby’s. I’ve never really enjoyed coffee in my life, but a friend convinced me to try the JaMocha Shake. “It’s so good,” they said. So anyway, after a shake and roast beef sandwiches, we go back to the football field to help out in the afternoon.
An hour or two later, something in my gut started turning sideways. I was sitting high up in the stands with friends, waiting for a band to finish their performance. Suddenly, it all came up. Roast beef and coffee shake. All over the stands…and dripping down onto who ever was unlucky enough to be below. At this field, the concessions were under the stands. Oof.
So I ended up going home, of course. But I know that a friend of mine unfortunately had to clean it up. Poor girl.
Oof, Roast Beef and Mocha… Another lesson learned. Don’t trust anything from a place that doesn’t usually make them. Not always for food safety but also just quality. Frappacinos from fast food, or a burger from a coffee joint. Order what they’re good at. (Sorry sounds like I’m telling, but I’m reflecting back on my old life lessons I learned the hard way)
I was on the final day of an overseas trip. I’d been there for several weeks, and my wife flew over and joined me for the last week to see the sights.
I’d eaten the hotel breakfast buffet almost every day of my stay with no issues. So, I grabbed my usual items, including some buffet line shakshuka (an eggs, feta, and tomato stew). It may have been sitting out a while…. Thankfully my wife opted for something else. Yum yum, check out, drop stuff off at my company’s HQ, off the airport, drop the rental, etc.
We were sitting in the airport inside the security check when it started - nausea, sweats, and bad cramps. Not the best look when in a foreign country with serious (and slow) airport security. Got through, beelined to the bathroom, and I thought I got it out from both ends. I boarded the plane feeling a bit better, but it ramped up again once we were onboard and continued for the entirety of the 13 hour flight home. I have seen immense torment inside the tiny bathroom of a 747 airliner, and I think I spent more time in there than my seat. When I did make it out, I sat shivering and sweaty in my seat for a few minutes before I had to go again.
I was thankful my wife was there to keep me hydrated and that the plane was empty enough that I could grab a seat row near the back for myself to lie down, instead of climbing over some poor bastard every time.
Surprisingly, I still like shakshuka.
That is the second airport plane story here in this thread. When I’m pre flight I eat only things I know, one example is McDonald’s. Something I usually don’t eat regulary, but I know how it affects me every time I fly. I’ll feel some indigestion, but much better than… well, you lived one of my nightmares.
A few years ago, I went to a cafe for breakfast, quite regularly. One morning I decided to try their cooked breakfast, quite similar to a Full English. I’m not a fan of sausages, especially cheap ones, so I didn’t think anything of it when I didn’t like the taste.
Over the rest of the day and the next morning, I ate a few different meals, but nothing unusual for me. By about lunch time I was feeling very rough. I was hot and sweaty, and needed the bathroom more often than usual. Now, I have a chronic illness, and between that and the meds, I get upset stomachs fairly often, to the point where I know if it’s serious or not just from experience.
I was starting to feel weak and dizzy, so I knew that it wasn’t normal, and then liquid fire started coming out of both ends. Luckily, my wife was home, and realised that I wasn’t joking about this time being worse, and called my doctor. I ended up in hospital for several days with severe food poisoning, and had to have IV fluids.
Environmental Health were called and quizzed me about everything I’d eaten in the last week, and agreed that it was probably the sausage on my breakfast. They investigated the café, but found no serious problems. Luckily, it looked like whatever was wrong with the sausage only affected me because of my health issues, and didn’t seriously affect anyone else.
I haven’t been back to that café though, just in case.
Anytime there is ground meat in the process like sausages I immediately have a second laser focus on it. You’re probably right that that’s what it was. All it takes is for one of them to be a bit undercooked
I’m not sure if this counts, but dysenteri from drinking contaminated water.
2008 rendered me and my family homeless for 6 or so years. I was a teenager back then.
We were on vacation in Morocco. We were never a rich family, this vacation was something we planned several years in advance. But as we were in Morocco the whole economy collapsed and we were left stranded.
We made it into Spain by selling a bunch of our stuff. Then we were left stranded in Spain. Still realing from the shock of having lost everything, we were living in some plastic tents next to a river. We weren’t allowed to drink the much cleaner water used by the local irrigation, so we took river water and boiled it.
Boiling it apparently wasn’t enough. For a whole week I had snot-like slime with blood clots coming out of both ends. Nothing I ate stayed in or could be digested. Some locals who decided to help us said I looked like a skeleton, like someone from a concentration camp. I felt weaker and weaker, more tired, slept longer until I was basically asleep the entire day. I was told I was dying.
What saved me may have been activated charcoal. My mom had a whole pot of it and was feeding it to me with yogurt.
Our family was on a road trip, and I made tuna salad sandwiches in the morning. We ended up never stopping for lunch, and in the evening I went to throw away the sandwiches. “They can’t be that bad,” said my husband, “you only made them this morning.” I gave him a “really?” look and continued to throw the sandwiches away.
Apparently this made my usually intelligent and science-minded husband eager to play the tuna roulette. He grabbed a sandwich and took a small bite “see, they are fine!” I called him crazy and threw the rest away. “You’re going to regret that,” I said.
The next morning, we are getting ready to drive to Bandolier National Monument, about a 45-min drive from our hotel. Everything is fine, my husband is driving. All of a sudden, he says “Shit.”
“What is it, baby?” “I need to go. Like, right now.”
He ends up crouching behind a lone scraggly tree next to the road while pooping pure shit water. The rest of his family pass us by in their other two cars. One of them stops as he wildly gestures for them to keep going. They finally get the hint and leave.
Yeah, we never made it to Bandolier that day. But he only had to shit one more time by the road on the way back to the hotel, so that was a win.
He has since agreed that my food safety knowledge is superior and developed a healthy respect for mayonnaise’s ability to ruin a fun day.
I too come from a family who knew more than scientists when it came to food spoilage. I think it’s why I have such a delicate colon now. Grandparents and parents who said “Just drink it, it’s fine” when their children say “It tastes funny”. So many “24 hour stomach bugs” that now that I’m grown I realize were probably food poisoning. For your husband I often think to when I feel guilty that food is wasted. I have to tell myself “No, throwing it in the trash wasn’t when it was wasted, it was wasted when I decided not to eat it earlier, that’s when I allowed it to become trash”. Eating it after it’s spoiled doesn’t make it un-wasted.
Probably the fish. The acid in mayo makes it spoil a lot less easily then people think.
Good to know!
While camping my dad and I found a watermelon. Not a wild one, or anything like that. One that someone had left. We ate it. We regretted it. It was not even that great tasting of a watermelon. Plus since we were camping we brought a limited amount of toilet paper, there was a lot of dipping our bottoms in the stream.
Congrats! So far you win for largest WHY?! in the post so far!
Why? We were poor and it was a free watermelon.
Years ago. Was visiting a client on-site. Meeting ran late and had to race home. Popped into a ‘natural’ food store to get something. Grabbed a package of pre-made ‘fresh’ shrimp spring rolls out of one of those open coolers. Ate in the car.
A 1.5 hour drive turned into a four hour nightmare with all the unplanned stops.
Never again.
This was really on me, but I once ate yogurt that was well past its expiration date and ended up with hives everywhere.
