"I need to know that my food's not rotten"

No.

I had the pleasure of salmonella too. I got it from chicken parm at a favorite Italian restaurant at the time. It showed up a few days after I ate it. Lost 10 pounds in 5 days! Fun times.

I have never gone out to eat and thought “I certainly hope the food isn’t literally rotten”. As you point out, I think the risk would be higher in an inexpensive chain restaurant.

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Same here. I always find it interesting that someone can pinpoint the cause of their food poisoning with such certainty. I know that health officials tend to base their analysis on food/waste samples and the epidemiology of the outbreak i.e. lots of sick people with the same symptoms eating the same thing.

One of the commonest causes of food poisoning symptoms, Norovirus, is very easily caught from its “aerosol distribution” i.e. a bout of violent diarrhoea or vomiting will disperse the virus into the air of the washroom so the next visits will breath it in and get sick. It also passes easily from hand to hand and survives quite well on door handles etc. And that is why it spreads so rapidly on cruise ships and results in so many ill people.

Also never had “rotten” of off meat served to me - after all its pretty easy to see/smell its off. Nearly all food poisoning is from organisms that thrive in perfectly good meat or other foods…very fresh food can host lots of nasty bugs as easily as old/rotten food…its just needs to be contaminated and kept a little warm for them to breed.

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I only found out after the fact the cause of my illness. Read about the peanut butter recall and, yup, #s matched. But, yes, ‘food poisoning’ doesn’t usually strike immediately so I also have wondered how people know the cause.

In my case when I got salmonella the doc asked me to go over what I had eaten in the last few days and the chicken seemed like the culprit. However, I do notice when a food makes me sick when I think of a specific food I ate it makes me feel sicker - does that make sense?

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Yeah… when i had my wisdom teeth out years ago, I had egg drop soup for lunch. (Returned to work after a day or two, but wasnt up to solid food yet)

Later that afternoon, I was stricken by somwthing that made me violently ill. (Pull off the highway and retching in the ditch ill!)

I know it wasnt the soup that caused it, but I can’t even think about eating egg drop soup…havent touched the stuff since.

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I’m like that with strawberries. Can’t even smell them.

Maybe in an inexpensive private restaurant. Chains are pretty strict about sanitation.

Me too.

I am currently still suffering from food poisoning like symptoms, having become ill on Tuesday evening. Was it a bad mussel in the restaurant the night before? Was it Norovirus, or similar, picked up on the ferry to France the next morning? Your guess is as good as mine.

But, to answer the OP, no I’ve never knowingly been served rotten meat. But then I don’t generally buy food from small takeaway outlets - the sort that are always being reported in the local paper for food hygiene contraventions. Nor do i often risk the likes of the Chinese buffet where food can be left standing for inappropriate periods of time.

I’ve had norovirus, or one of its forms. It was miserable, but I knew it wasn’t from food. The nephew brought it home from daycare and silly auntie risked a visit. Good thing I had the next day off :scream:

One Halloween in grade school, was sick the night after trick or treating, somehow I associated it with baby Ruth candy bars and didn’t eat them for years. But it was probably the flu.

Harters, are the health inspection results posted in the UK? (I don’t remember)

Here, at least, the results are a matter of public record – posted on the website of the local health authority, and in some states, posted for all to see in the restaurant itself. Here in Florida local media frequently posts lists of the most egregious failures and broadcasts the lists – so it’s fairly easy to find out if a place is well-known for health-code violations, of if the restaurant (or the inspector…) was just having a very bad day.

The online reports even tell you what the infractions were – so you can decide for yourself if it’s a dealbreaker. (one of the local requirements is to have paper towels next to the sink…I’m probably not going to avoid a place on this one, while rodent excrement in the walk-in is a no-go)

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The summary scores are - food outlets are rated 1 - 5 - with 5 being the best. You’ll often find that highly rated restaurants will have an official poster in their window noting the score - but it;s not compulsory so, unsurprisingly, low rated places don’t have posters

I have family members who use the ratings as their prime basis for deciding whether to eat there or not. Personally, don’t usually read them before going somewhere - not least as the scores might be out of date and I could miss somewhere interesting. That said, I will look afterwards - I have a belief that if a restaurant can’t keep its public areas, like toilets, clean, then heaven knows what’s going on in the parts you don’t see - like the kitchen. And, yes, I appreciate that’s shutting the stable door after the horse has gone.

Here’s the “scores on the doors” website. You can enter, say, a town or a particular suburb, etc or just the name of a place

Yep. Ate too many plums when I was five years old.

See: Chipotle e. Coli; Chi Chi’s scallions. Etc.

exactly. the more channels a food travels through before getting on your plate is that many more opportunities for something to go wrong. posted sop from corporate means nothing if the boh staff is careless or poorly managed.

thinking “rotten” food is the only way to get food poisoning shows a basic misunderstanding of how that all works anyway.

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That’s the point. “Rotten” is useless and rarely happens.

I hadn’t been thinking so much vegetables, but there is a real issue with them lately. Nothing to do with the staff’s cooking skills!

I’ve had bad luck-

I had severe food poisoning from I think rice but am not sure.

I came back from Mexico with a parasite once. It took 6 months to get properly diagnosed and treated.

This past winter, I returned from Mexico with Salmonella.

People, including the doctor, asked me where I ate or where do I think I got it from. I’m like who knows, I could have got it anywhere. People pick it up here in Canada.

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