Oh, thanks for that. Now I can’t help but “picture” you as sounding like Krusty The Klown.
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“Homer gave me a kidney – it wasn’t his, I didn’t need it, and it came postage due – but still, a lovely gesture.” – raccoon
Sometimes you don’t even to suspect any connection at all. Ages ago, so forgot the context, but I wasn’t feeling too good, made the mistake of having some fried crabcakes, and ended up puking them up shortly after. I know they had nothing to do with it because no one else who had any got sick in the slightest, but man, the taste and texture of them coming back up, along with the technicolor bits of red (bell) pepper, green parsley(?) and other stuff, along with the unavoidable seafoody stank from the crab, made me never want to so much as look at a crabcake even to today. And they were really good.
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Well we have two people here with identical symptoms, shortly after eating food with few same ingredients at the same restaurant, there is a good chance it had something to do with it.
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As a Health Inspector with over 20 years experience. The reason I said raccoon should look into a stool sample is that will tell the bacteria involved. That will determine the likely source and time frame from the incubation period. People always blame the last thing they are whereas some bacteria have up to a 72 hour incubation period.
If it is something that indicates a time frame of something at home, you would look at cross contamination or similar foods.
If it indicates the restaurant then the Inspector would evaluate all parts of the operation with emphasis on likely sources for the bacterium to contaminate the food in question. If there are other people sick from the restaurant then there is an epidemiological smoking gun. Then it has to be determined if it is restaurant or supplier.
It all comes down to what bacterium is isolated from the stool sample, otherwise it is just a guessing game. Hopefully the Health Unit has asked them to submit a stool sample, you can still shed after symptoms resolve.
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Well, that’s all well and good if you want to rely on science. I was kinda looking for some off-beat China conspiracy theory
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Hmm, no thanks, I’ll pass. 
But seriously, sorry you both had to go through that, sounds like no fun at all. Hope you’re doing better now, although it usually leaves you pretty knackered for a good week or so after the main symptoms are gone.
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That is actually a good thing in this case, being on probation or parole, that means they are former inmates, when sharing a cell hygiene is important, people get shanked, and beat up for not following it, just recently a serial killer who shared a cell with a child rapist, strangled the rapist to death, cuz he did not follow it.
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Not the cleanest people to cook your food or watch your children.
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not seeing anything inherently unhygienic about having comitted -a- crime sometime in the past
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Those stuck in low paying jobs may have -many- priors. Usually it’s drugs and alcohol as part of the diet. Hygienic is not a strong trait. The wife and myself picked a near by Burger King one day. The cashier had the devil’s pitchfork dots tattooed on the left web between the thumb and pointer finger. AB tattooed on the ring finger. He’s in his mid thirties. We never ate there again. Now don’t get me wrong he’s probably only a low level aryan brother, but it’s my choice on who serves my food.
I’m going to guess you’re young and just virtue signaling. To say “not seeing anything inherently unhygienic about having comitted -a- crime sometime in the past” is not using good judgement skills.
If days go by, then the source of the contamination becomes increasingly difficult to pinpoint, if not impossible.
I would have contacted the restaurant. There’s no harm in that. Mainly, it achieves 2 things:
- confirmation for yourself (you may learn from them if other people called in) and
- alerting them about it so they could check on possible contamination sources.
When you look at E.coli outbreaks, most of the time it’s having to do with various types of lettuce (Romaine being one of the big offenders). And other leafy vegetables like spinach, kale, etc.
The FDA has been so badly neutered due to insufficient funding, compared to the USDA. Also, the FDA / USDA division of focus is complicated and confusing. This is where calls against “big government” come into play, because the system is supposed to protect people. If it’s insufficiently funded, it can’t do that properly.
I may get flack for bringing him up, but so be it. John Oliver is a comedian who has shifted into investigative journalism. His team does an amazing job of research and bringing to light important topics. He has won Emmys for it. He did a whole piece on this that’s worth watching, to understand what’s at stake. The largest problem with E.coli is animal and produce farming situated too close together. Last Week Tonight: Food Safety.
CAFOs, yeh.
That’s why people like Joel Salatin are so hardcore about smaller and truly sustainable farming and liverstock. As in literal free-range, not just 3sqft vs 1sqft per chicken, etc.
I’ve had real milk before, and in coffee it’s a bit odd, as it forms a “skin” on top just like pudding, as the fat rises to the top. Tasty, though.
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Nah, just coming from a part of the world where we give actual second chances to people who’ve served their sentences and not force them out to the margins for life.
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Smaller sustainable farming is the way to go. Big time agro business is awful. The very fact that food has to travel so far makes it an utter waste. The enormous centralized agro premise came about treating transportation costs as “negligible” in the grand scheme. But they were so horribly ignorant of the long term impact and the dangers it would present.
I saw a program on Brooklyn Agriculture and it’s phenomenal what people are able to conceive of for low overhead farming. Not just phenomenal use of space, but extremely efficient use of water. Old style massive field farming is OK for some regions, but it shouldn’t be the dominant form of farming. On top of all that, local produce just tastes better. It’s not having to be harvested prematurely and can soak up nutrients all the way up to a few days before hitting the market.
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But how does the tase of a tomato compare to a real farm grown tomato where real sunlight was used. Cant be the same, there is always a downside.
Eating a fresh vine/whatever ripened product is so much better than getting something picked green. Then processed and shipped to the market.
There are some local fruit stands that are simply great.
I went to college in Illinois. Corn fresh off the stalk. Quick boil - salt, pepper, and lots of butter. (Homer Simpson UMMMM noise).
But some places the soil/climate just won’t support some products.
I was having this discussion with a buddy from the UK. Now a honorary Texan.
He’s all for local / small producers.
But I posed this.
Store: These are really superior eggs. We think our customers will happily pay a bit more for this quality.
Farmer: I’m so happy we can do business. Are you ready to place an order?
Store: Yes. We’d like 10,000 eggs.
Farmer: Ugh, OK. I can do that I think.
Store: And we will need 10,000 a day. Forever.
Farmer: …
That’s the problem with the quantities needed in the modern world.
So many places it’s just not possible to source from small suppliers.
All the Best,
Jeff
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When I was a kid and went overseas to visit family, there was one day I went with some cousins on a walk, and we came across some wild strawberries just growing at random.
Little things about the size/shape of candy-corn, but each one was an explosion of flavor. Even back then I was used to store-bought strawberries that would be half-white near the stump, a vague strawberryish flavor, so when I had one of those I remember being completely blown away by the actual [gasp!] flavor.
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If after considering the scenario you posed to your buddy, he responded with the following?
"What would you do if you became ill from what you assumed was food poisoning after eating the eggs you purchased from this store?
Light is light. It’s not like there’s some special nutritious quality about photons coming from the sun versus indoor lighting. And they’ve done a lot of research on light temperature to find what helps photosynthesis the most. LEDs available in a wide range of temps have made it possible, as you know.