Food Poisoning = Bad

I had food poisoning from late Monday night all the way until Tuesday afternoon. It sucked! Not being able to eat or drink anything without throwing it up. I've never been fond of vomiting. When I expelled my dinner & lunch Tuesday at 12:15 am, for some reason the sight of previously eaten food turned me off. The other thing that I didn't care for was that just prior to the regurgitation, I felt the stomach acid assault the esophagus in such a way that it felt like I was being stabbed through the heart. Food poisoning = not a fun time. Fast forward 4 more vomiting sessions and countless hours spent in bed and the bathroon, today I feel fine. Never mind that I was violently ill yesterday, now it's like nothing happened. Oh well live and learn.

Tips on evading food poisoning:

• If the restaraunt you are planning to eat has no insignia or flourishes in the name, beware! You know how McDonalds has the arches and Burger King has the giant burger in the name. If the name of the resaurant is simply "Rita's Place" (arbitrarily chosen name - any relation to an actual restaurant would be coincidental) without any fancy lettering or background or logo, you should be wary because it's probably not a chain. Not a chain often equates to a higher chance of food poisoning. Not to say you cannot get food poisoning from a chain, but the odds are much higher that the chains enforce some sort of standardization when it come to the food handling. If your friends recommend a local place, fine. At least then you can blame them if you get sick.


• If the food server is asian, yet the food is not. Okay maybe I'm jumping the gun a little here, but I'm personally going to rethink things if I'm going to a 'cajun' restaurant where the server is speaking to me in a heavy asian accent. There are plenty of asian restaurants around anyway...


• Finally if the food sucks, don't eat it! That way, if you die of food poisoning, at least the food would have been good!

There you have it. Out of the hundreds of ways you can get food poisoning you can at least curtail one of the ways. (disclaimer - I didn't actually research any of this, so don't take these tips too seriously...)

On a side note, I really am not that fond of throwing up. Case in point, about a month or so I went to a friend's house, drank to much, threw up my dinner, and had a hangover the next day. Without realizing it, I haven't had a drop of alcohol since that night...