Two diseases you can infect by food.

Two main diseases can be spread by food. 

Food is the most important nutrient source for the life. With the globalization of the human population, we use to consume finished food products and fast foods such as ready-to-serve beverages, canned foods, and the products which have minimum processing requirements to serve. 

It’s very easy to buy a product and consume it without processing. But there are some factors to concern when buying a product from the market. You have to think, is this product safe. You can infect microbial diseases by inappropriate processing and handling of the food. Sometimes it will severely affect your health. So that’s why we have to concern about the Food-based microbial infections. Here are some microbial diseases infected by consuming unsafe foods.

1). Gastroenteritis

Some others called this disease ‘Staphylococcal gastroenteritis’ due to the main pathogenic bacteria of this disease is Staphylococcus aureus when it spread through contaminated food. It is gram-positive Bacteria and normally growing at room temperature which means around 250c. 

They are producing enterotoxins when they in foods and those enterotoxins cause the illnesses. Enterotoxins are the toxins that can stimulate the human gastrointestinal tract abnormally. Staphylococcus aureus produces six types of enterotoxins and two of them are more associated with food poisoning. Viruses, parasites, and fungus are also responsible for this disease. 

Viral Gastroenteritis can be spread from person to person by contaminated surfaces other than the contaminated foods. 

Symptoms - The disease shows various symptoms like salivation, nausea, retching, abdominal crampings, headache, muscular cramping, sweating, chills, prostration, weak pulses, shallow respiration, and in a severe cases vomiting. These are the results of the stimulation of the abdominal tract. 

This can be deadly to infants, adults, and the people who have a weak immune system. The main reason for death is dehydration. So it’s better to avoid the treatments. 

Prevention - you can easily prevent from Gastroenteritis by better handling of foods. Staphylococcus aureus is typical mesophilic bacteria and the growth can be reduced in more than 500c and lower than 70c. If your foods are subjected to heat treatments before consuming, a sufficient amount of Bacteria cells can be destroyed and foods keeping in a refrigerator reduced the growth of this bacteria. Especially the packed products including UHT treated beverages should be kept under the refrigerator temperature after unveil. The optimum pH for the Staphylococcus aureus is pH 6-7. So, many canned products are stored in a slightly acidic or basic medium to avoid that pH. 

Need to avoid the contamination by using microbial free ingredients and raw materials by using Good Manufacturing Practices. Can use bacteriostatic substances (Eg: serine, antibiotics) as additives to destroy the pathogen.  

2) Botulism

This is a common food poisoning happen in the world, especially with canned products. Botulism is caused by a neurotoxin in the food. These neurotoxins are produced by a bacteria called Clostridium botulinum. Clostridium is a pathogen that difficult to destroy because of it’s spore-forming ability. Spores are heat liable and cannot be destroyed by high temperature, because of that Ultra High Temperature (UHT) treatments are used to destroy the microorganisms and their spores in food. 

Clostridium botulinum can be secreted neurotoxins in the food surface. These neurotoxins have interfered with the nerve transmission when the food consumed. It’s called Botulism. 

Symptoms - Generally, the symptoms begin within 18 to 36 hours of consuming the contaminated food. drooping eyelids, dry mouth, difficult to breathe, double vision, blurred vision, slurred speech, the thick feeling tongue can be seen. The symptoms due to the paralysis of the muscle. These symptoms can be more critical according to the toxin concentration and can be deadly in severe cases. 

Prevention - Clostridium species are mostly grown in seafood. The bacteria produce spores and remain in the food, therefore need to destroy the spores in processing. UHT and sterilization methods are preferable for that. When considering the canned products, they have a better environment to grow inside the sealed cans due to the anaerobic condition of it. So you have to consider it when using canned seafood. But the neurotoxins of Clostridium botulinum are not liable in heat. Therefore boiling for 10 minutes is enough to avoid Botulism. Bacteria are also sensitive to low pH. They cannot tolerate lower than pH 4.6. So, more foods are stored under low pH. 

Other than that you have to check properly when you are buying canned products. If the cans are bloated or chopped, those cans can be contaminated. 

By Sajith Pushpakumara