Can You Catch ‘Food Poisoning?’ It’s Not Common, But, Yes, And Here’s How

If there was a checklist for determining if you’ll get food poisoning from that afternoon snack, it might go something like this:

• Smells bad?

• Feels slimy?

• Tastes bad?

Check, check and check. 

In fact, all three of those things were readily apparent when Emily Steele’s husband Travis decided to make himself and his wife a snack on a recent Saturday afternoon.

Travis has long considered himself a “tough guy” when it comes to eating food that might be just a little bit past its prime. It’s never made him sick before, so he’s never worried overly much about it.

Being a somewhat chivalrous guy, he took the old lunch meat that smelled bad and felt slimy and tasted off for himself, wrapping each of the last four slices around some cheese. Four, as it happened, was just right for him.

Then he prepared his wife’s snack, using the brand-new bag of fresh lunchmeat for her snack. She got four slices as well, each wrapped around a stick of cheese. This is their go-to snack when they get the munchies.

“We came up with that idea because we didn’t want anything sweet,” the Cheyenne couple told Cowboy State Daily. “We wanted something meaty, something with protein.”

Steele happily ate her tasty snacks, none the wiser. 

But, a few hours later … Travis’ stomach started to feel … well, wretched. That’s the only word for it.

Soon after that, he didn’t just feel horrible, he was vomiting from one end and having diarrhea from the other, as well as getting a mild fever. 

Travis ‘fessed up to the rotten meat then, and the Steeles decided it was likely a case of food poisoning, or what doctors might more technically refer to as food-borne illness, given that in this case no one knows what the particular pathogen was.

“He was thinking in his mind, ‘Oh when I was a teenager, and when I was a kid, I ate all sorts of garbage and I never got sick, ever,” Emily said. “He would just eat it. He’s literally eaten a chocolate cake out of the trash can before.”

Can Food Poisoning Be Viral?

Emily wasn’t too hard on her husband over all of this. After all, he felt wretched enough already. No need for more consequences than that. 

Instead of scolding, she snuggled up to him at night like usual, hoping to make him feel better.

Unfortunately for Emily, just a few days later, she, too, found herself facing the exact same symptoms as her husband, starting with the gut-wrenching, stomach-twisting nausea, soon followed by the vomiting, the diarrhea, and the fever. 

“I was like, ‘Why am I having the same symptoms as he did a few days ago,’” Emily said. “I didn’t eat the meat.”

She started searching online to find out if food poisoning can be catching, and that’s when she learned that, sometimes, it can indeed be catching.

“It can be spread through body fluids,” she said. “So I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, food poisoning can be viral.’ And I ended up getting really sick. I was out of work for like three days.”

The whole experience has since transformed her husband’s attitude about eating food with funk. 

“I think he learned his lesson not to eat expired meat,” she said. “I’ve been trying to get him to be more of, if it seems even a little off, like not clearly off, but if it’s even just a little bit off, just trash it. It’s not worth the three days off, the four to five days of suffering, for the few cents or dollars it will save.”

It Can Be ‘Viral,’ But …

Throwing away food any time it seems the least bit off is a good plan, Laramie-based family physician Dr. Tracey Haas told Cowboy State Daily.

But, while it is true that food borne illnesses can be transmitted to other people through bodily fluids like vomit and diarrhea, Haas believes there are other, more likely scenarios to consider in this particular case.

“Usually, we just see that type of (transmission) in nursing homes or in day cares,” Haas said. “Campylobacter, for example, is kind of famous for not being killed by chlorine. That’s why, if someone has an accident in a swimming pool, people will drain the pool, because you can’t get Campylobacter out. So, if someone contracted that through food poisoning or otherwise, they could spread it in that way.”

Given the timeframes of illnessmhere, the more likely scenario, Haas suggested, is that when the husband finished making his snack with the contaminated meat, he likely didn’t wash his hands before preparing his wife’s snack. That would have resulted in carrying at least some of the contamination from his own funky snack right on over to his wife’s.

This still fits in with her delayed reaction to the spoilage, since the amount of contamination she ingested was much less. The amount of bacteria or virus is directly proportional to how quickly it can spread. More bacteria means faster takeoff.

“There’s so many possibilities for cross contamination in that scenario,” Haas added. “So, if she got a lower dose of bacteria, if it was say, shigella, he would get sick pretty fast, and then she might get sick a day or so later.”

That Old Ounce Of Prevention

Without an actual test, it’s impossible to know what bug actually bit the Steeles, Haas added, but there’s another scenario that she sees happening quite often in her own family practice, and it, too, fits this scenario. 

“Someone will come in and be like, ‘Oh my gosh, I have food poisoning, my whole family has food poisoning,’” Haas said. “And you’re like, “Okay, well did everybody eat the same thing?”

More often than not, the answer Haas will hear is no. 

In that case, what Haas usually suspects is a bug called norovirus, or, as most people refer to it, the stomach “flu.”

Norovirus isn’t related to the influenza virus at all, but it is the most common cause of a short bout with gastroenteritis lasting one to two days.

It’s also one of the most common food-borne illnesses in America. That’s because the virus is just so darn contagious. Cooks or restaurant servers can readily transfer it to food in a commercial setting, long before they have any symptoms themselves to know they are sick.

“To get norovirus, all you would have to do is be in the same room holding back someone’s hair,” Haas said. 

Norovirus would fit the timeframes in the Steeles’ scenario well.

“He could have been exposed to norovirus a day or two before, then he happened to eat a sandwich that was funny,” Haas said. “And then norovirus finally presented itself a few hours later. People will often assign the last thing they ate as the thing that caused their quote unquote food poisoning. But it’s really more common for it to be caused by a virus.” 

It would also fit with Emily remaining well until a couple of days later.

One other point Haas makes is about the technical terminology. Norovirus is America’s most common food-borne illness, but doctors wouldn’t typically refer to it as food poisoning.

Food-borne illness is technically a much broader category. For medical professionals, it refers to anything that could make someone sick after eating or drinking something. That could include allergens, which are not catching, or it could be bacteria formed due to spoilage. But it could also include norovirus that was spread from a symptomless but, nevertheless, infected chef.

Food poisoning is a much smaller subset of food-borne illness. It refers to specific toxins in food that have spoiled. A common example is botulism. The bacteria aren’t necessarily harmful directly. It’s the botulinum toxin it produces that actually causes the deadly paralytic illness. 

The latter types of food-borne illnesses aren’t catching. Nor can they be killed off by cooking. The poison will still be there, even after the food is well-done.

That’s another reason Haas believes the Steeles reached the right conclusion to toss out food if there’s even a whiff of funk. 

Foodborne illnesses infect 48 million Americans annually, often because people didn’t want to “waste” food. But it’s never really worth the risk to eat something the least bit off, whether the consequence is three or four days of suffering from an unidentifiable bug, or a dance with some deadly toxin. 

Just don’t forget, if you’ve touched the funky stuff, to wash your hands before preparing your snacks. Otherwise, you could still transfer some of the bad stuff to fresh food, and then still wind up causing yourself or someone you care about to become quite ill.

Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.