At least once in your lifetime, you must have experienced food poisoning, a common digestive infection caused by ingesting bacteria either in food or drinking water. While most people think that food poisoning is just related to main meals, it is also a possible occurrence in baked foods. Some of the ingredients used in baking cakes and pastry are synonymous with food poisoning. These include dairy products and eggs among many others.
What are the symptoms of food poisoning?
The symptoms of food poisoning will start to manifest within 24 hours of ingestion of contaminated food or water. At times, the symptoms may appear very fast, even some minutes after ingestion. Most of the common symptoms of food poisoning include stomachache, headache, vomiting, nausea, fever, and fatigue. The symptoms may last several days or even a week. But in some cases, the symptoms may go away just after vomiting.
Food poisoning doesn’t affect one person unless you are the only one who ate the food or drank the contaminated water. It will affect almost everyone who took that contaminated food but then, the symptoms may vary from one person to the other.
Diagnosing food poisoning
Food poisoning is quite easy to diagnose especially from the fact that the symptoms are generally consistent. Also, the fast manifestation of the signs points to something you just ingested.
But at times, it may be difficult to diagnose whether it is food poisoning or something worse. But then, it’s quite hard to seek medical advice from the clinics because of diarrhea. Fortunately, we have online doctor support services like Kyr care that offer online consultation. If you feel it’s hard accessing a clinic, click here to find a general GP who will help you out since diagnosing diarrhea doesn’t require a physical examination.
In some cases, you may want a comprehensive checkup so a stool sample will be taken and tissue culture performed to identify the cause.
Treating food poisoning
The treatment of food poisoning largely depends on the severity of the infection. Like said earlier, you could just vomit and feel alright but in some cases, you may need to seek professional help. There are two treatment stages.
The first is to inhibit diarrhea by taking water and preferably Oral Rehydration Solution (ORS) to rehydrate the body. That should solve the problem in 24–48 hours. However, some cases require a second treatment phase, and here, there is some medication prescribed; antispasmodics, anti-infective, and antibiotics. You can get the prescription from an online doctor consultation or visiting your local clinic.
Prevention is better than cure
When it comes to baking, it is very easy to prevent food poisoning because the ingredients that can cause food poisoning are easily identifiable by the recipe. Make sure to use fresh eggs, fresh milk, fresh butter among others. Also, remember to check the expiry date of flour, baking powder, and the other ingredients. Above all, use clean water to clean all the ingredients and also to bake the dough and most importantly, observe kitchen hygiene!