Journal of Infectious Diseases & Preventive Medicine
Open Access

Food Borne Illness

Foodborne illness (also foodborne disease and colloquially referred to as food poisoning) is any illness resulting from the spoilage of contaminated food, pathogenic bacteria, viruses, or parasites that contaminate food, as well as toxins such as poisonous mushrooms and various species of beans that have not been boiled for at least 10 minutes.Symptoms vary depending on the cause, and are described below in this article. A few broad generalizations can be made. For contaminants requiring an incubation period, symptoms may not manifest for hours to days, depending on the cause and on quantity of consumption. Longer incubation periods tend to cause sufferers to not associate the symptoms with the item consumed, so they may misattribute the symptoms to gastroenteritis, for example.