Food poisoning is a distressing experience that can turn a pleasant meal into a painful ordeal – or even a deadly one. While many cases of food poisoning resolve on their own, there are instances where the consequences can be far more serious, leading to significant medical bills, lost wages, and lasting health effects.

Imagine eating a delicious meal at your favorite café or restaurant, only to experience nausea, vomiting, cramping, stomach pain, and diarrhea a few hours later. While most of these symptoms might subside within a few days, food-related illnesses can lead to weakness, fever, tingling, dehydration, and even death. In fact, you will be surprised to know that approximately 48 million people suffer from food poisoning every year. This is about one in every six US citizens.

This week, families around Northern Illinois and across the country gathered to celebrate Independence Day. For many people, such celebrations include backyard cookouts with massive spreads of delicious food of all types.

Unfortunately, it is not uncommon to attend a Fourth of July cookout and then come home feeling a bit unwell. Before long, you might feel quite ill and have symptoms such as nausea, diarrhea, vomiting, and fever. You might even recognize the situation as attributable to something you ate, but the term “food poisoning” might feel like a stretch. However, the reality is that if something you ate made you sick and food allergies are not to blame, there is a good chance that you are, in fact, suffering from food poisoning.

Potential Liability for the Host

Over the last few weeks, posts on this blog have offered some summer cookout safety tips so that those who host backyard meals can help prevent their guests from getting sick. However, foodborne illnesses are still possible at summer cookouts. The first potential source of liability for summer cookout food poisoning is the person who hosts the get-together.

Over the last couple of blog posts, we have talked about some of the ways to keep your guests from contracting foodborne illnesses during your summer cookouts. Previously, we have discussed maintaining a clean grill and proper handling procedures for meats, chicken, and seafood. While grilling is a big part of most summer cookouts, there is often a variety of other foods that help to complete a backyard meal. With several months of warm weather — and numerous opportunities for cookouts — still to go this year, it is time to talk about keeping the side dishes safe as well.

Maintaining Safe Temperatures

Most backyard barbecues are more or less buffet-style meals, especially those that involve larger numbers of guests. The most basic food safety rule for buffet-style meals is to keep foods hot if they are supposed to be hot and cold if they are supposed to be cold. Hot means above 140° F, and cold means below 40° F. The “danger zone” for food safety is between these temperatures, and food should not be left in the danger zone for longer than two hours. If the outdoor temperature is above 90° F, food should not be in the danger zone for longer than one hour. Dangerous bacteria can multiply very quickly in the danger zone.

Here are a few tips for keeping food safe:

If you are the type of person who plays “fast and loose” with food safety—maybe, you are willing to eat those deviled eggs that have been sitting on the buffet table all day—there is a good chance you had to deal with food poisoning occasionally. And, you might not have even recognized your issues as food poisoning, as some cases can be much milder than others.

Most of us generally understand that improper food handling and storage temperatures can allow the pathogens that cause foodborne illness to contaminate our food. But what if someone else in your household ate contaminated food and you did not? Is it possible to contract a foodborne illness from another person? The answer, unfortunately, is yes.

How Food Poisoning Can Be Spread

There are two basic ways in which food poisoning spreads from person to person. The first is through direct exposure to the bodily fluids of an infected person. For example, if your spouse is suffering from a foodborne illness caused by norovirus, the virus is likely to be present in his or her vomit or diarrhea. This means you need to be extra careful as you help care for your spouse and to take all proper precautions to avoid exposure to the pathogen.