Food Poisoning

You know, when you eat an egg, and it doesn't taste right, look right or smell right? Well that means that it could be contaminated with a dangerous substance (Like Chelsea). Food poisoning is the result of ingesting organisms or toxins in your food. Food poisoning can affect one person, or it can occur as an outbreak among several people who all ate the same thing. Even though food poisoning is quite rare in North America, 60 to 80 million people get affected by food poisoning each year, and 6 to 8 million die from it each year. It mainly occurs at picnics, school cafeterias, or at big social events, like parties with food at them. These are all cases where food is contaminated by something, or it isn't prepared correctly. Most of the time, people get contaminated by under-cooked meats or expired dairy products. Bacterias also cause deadly poisoning. Most cases are caused by common bacteria (see Jonathan's speech) like Staphylococcus or E. coli. The main evil ones are Staph Aureus, E. coli enteritis, salmonella, shigella, campy lobacter, cholera, botulism, listeria, bacillus cereus and yersina (gee, funny names!). Kids (like me) and the elderly, (like Mr. Bark), and people with diabetes, heart disorders or kidney disease, have a much higher chance of having deadly symptoms from bacteria in our food. In places like Africa, there are many more diseases that can affect Canadians, because there are many bacterias that our bodies aren't used to. It is also warmer and there are lots of insects that can carry the diseases around. And now for the symptoms of being poisoned (this is my favorite part). Depending on what exactly your stupid brain told you to eat, the symptoms vary.

They can last form 2 hours, to days, weeks, months, years, decades! Ok...I should've stopped at weeks, but that's still a long time. You can have nausea and vomiting, abdominal cramps, diarrhea, fever, or head ache. Those are only the good ones! More serious effects include respiratory distress, kidney failure, bleeding disorders, arthritis, nervous system disorders or death!!!