Well, it Could Be Worse

Kirsten's been sick lately, with a bug we think she may have caught from the Starbucks at the Galleria Mall. She and her friend both have the same symptoms of the illness, and they only time they spent together was at the mall, and the only food they ate was at the Starbucks there. So, while it's admittedly a guess, it's fairly logical.

Food poisoning, for me, is always a weird thing. There are actually two types: food-borne toxins and food-borne pathogens. Toxins are what you get when a food product is allowed to reach growth temperature (it cools down or heats up to the 40-160-degree fahrenheit range) and bacteria grow, producing nasty byproducts. Then the food is reheated or re-cooled, and the wee beasties die. But the toxins remain, and so when someone eats the food, they get sick, and do so quickly. Something like that happened in Philadelphia a few years ago, and made a bunch of kids sick.

The other kind, food-borne pathogens, are just what they sound like - the critter grows, you eat the food while the critter is still alive, and eventually it reproduces enough to make you sick. Every E. coli outbreak in the world happens like this.

Actually, the second kind is the reason that the first thing I learned in Boy Scouts about camping was to filter your water. Deer carry a parasite called Giardia, which is a nasty little critter. The best part about the symptoms is this bit:

Symptoms of infection include (in order of frequency) diarrhea, malaise, excessive gas (often flatulence or a foul or sulphuric-tasting belch, which has been known to be so nauseating in taste that it can cause the infected person to vomit).

South Park did a great episode on diarrhea a few years ago, which thankfully is now available as a fully-downloadable free episode at the South Park website. Click on "Full Episodes," then "Season 1," then "Death."

Hilarious. Disgusting, but hilarious.