Parents were really into hot wings. They kept ordering them hotter and hotter. It got to the point where my eyes would water being in the same room as them, and I have a high tolerance for spicy food. However, I don’t enjoy the texture of wings and usually got something else, and I remember commenting that this time they smelled “off.” My nose is sharp and something smelled unmistakably rotten. They brushed it aside saying it was probably just the new nuclear fission burn the hair off your tits tropical fuck storm flavor or whatever goofy name they were newly trying out. I was feeling nauseous from the odor so I took my food to my room while they plowed through the pile occasionally pausing to exclaim I was missing out.

I woke up to one of them crashing their way through the house to the bathroom in a blind panic. The door slammed shut, the fan whirred to life and I could hear muttering, gasping and cursing and then the lovely sound of their body forcibly ejecting chicken from both ends. “Goddammit what the hell.” And then a request for a bucket. Stepdad staggered out looking pale as a sheet. “I think I need to go to the ER. Feels like I have knives in my stomach.” My Mom hadn’t succumbed yet, it hit her while she was in the waiting room after she drove him there. They were sick for about a week from salmonella and I was freed from their trufflepig chicken snarfing noises for about a year.

Kebab joint in the very centre of our million person town.

Ate it on the day before Xmas, was walking and talking again by mid Boxing Day.

Bleaugh, lie down sweats and toilet yoyo.

The place shut down 5yrs after.

This was 20yrs ago, no kebab related issues since then, all tasty. Sour cream and garlic sauce, add a single felafel too.

In high school we were hosting a marching band competition for schools a little smaller than ours. The band students helped work the whole event, so we were outside running around the football field all day.

Eventually, we got to lunch, and myself and friends ran over to Arby’s. I’ve never really enjoyed coffee in my life, but a friend convinced me to try the JaMocha Shake. “It’s so good,” they said. So anyway, after a shake and roast beef sandwiches, we go back to the football field to help out in the afternoon.

An hour or two later, something in my gut started turning sideways. I was sitting high up in the stands with friends, waiting for a band to finish their performance. Suddenly, it all came up. Roast beef and coffee shake. All over the stands…and dripping down onto who ever was unlucky enough to be below. At this field, the concessions were under the stands. Oof.

So I ended up going home, of course. But I know that a friend of mine unfortunately had to clean it up. Poor girl.

1999 - Taco Bell nachos did me in, never ate there or at any Taco Bell ever again.

2004 - Some sushi joint outside of Tacoma, WA, I had the shrimp tempura. Nothing tasted off, but that was my first experience with it coming out of both ends at the same time.

2005 - I was an idiot that thought, for God knows what reason, that the floor of the trailer I called home at the time while stationed in Iraq would remain cold enough to keep a can of Fritos dip cool after I opened it (we did not have a fridge). I was very very wrong and paid the price later the following evening after finishing the dip that day, and that was my second experience with it coming out both ends at the same time. I know it was my own fault, but I still can’t eat those dips to this day.

Fast forward to 2020 - 2023, something is making me randomly ill on a monthly, sometimes weekly basis. I eat a regular meal, 30 minutes later I’m in the bathroom with horrible cramps and shits. It took me nearly 3 years to figure out that I’d become lactose intolerant due to age (this is apparently a common occurrence as you get older). Haven’t had any issues now that I know to avoid most dairy, but I can immediately tell if I’ve unknowingly ingested some, because it feels like I’ve been poisoned 15 minutes into consuming it. Then comes the frantic race to swallow as much Lactaid and lactase pills as I can to calm the storm before it can reach my intestines.

I started a new job at a nice-ish office, next to a pretty fancy mall. On my 3rd day, my colleagues invited me to lunch at the food court of the mall. A couple hours later, I started getting nauseous and sweaty. Had to rush to the bathroom a couple times, which looking back I was lucky it was coming out of one end instead of two. After the 2nd time, I thought I’d chance it and rush home rather than having to go through another ~2 hours of this at the office. Luckily I lived close to the office back then so I was able to make it home. But in my rush I forgot to tell my manager, just told a coworker sitting near my desk I wasn’t feeling well and left. I emailed my manager that night, telling him that I also wouldn’t be able to make it in the next day. So my very first week at this job, I was only there for 2.5 days before getting sick for 1.5 days. Not the best first impression.

I didn’t know until much later, but my manager told me that he thought I hated the job and was about to quit after a couple days.

Years ago. Was visiting a client on-site. Meeting ran late and had to race home. Popped into a ‘natural’ food store to get something. Grabbed a package of pre-made ‘fresh’ shrimp spring rolls out of one of those open coolers. Ate in the car.

A 1.5 hour drive turned into a four hour nightmare with all the unplanned stops.

Never again.

I was making the wife and I some turkey meatballs with a little cube of mozzarella in the middle trying to be fancy. Turns out, when the mozzarella melts, and you don’t have a food thermometer, it’s REALLY hard to tell if the meatballs are done in the middle… We both spent two days being sick from both ends in a one bathroom apartment. Also had to pay $300 for the doctors note for my crappy job so they wouldn’t fire me for missing work for two days. Not my proudest cooking moment…

Acorn squash, bruh. Shit was fucked.

We had just moved from Portland to Denver, and were trying new restaurants. One Sunday we ordered delivery from a local Chinese place that had good reviews. Food came, we ate and all was good for a couple of hours.

Then my wife said "I think I’m gonna puke* and dashed for the bathroom. Being the good husband, I followed her to hold her hair while she worshipped the porcelain god.

She had barely got done emptying the content of her stomach, when I literally had to shove her out of the way to emoty mine.

We were both miserable for about 36 hours.

Sister and dad love Oysters, Muscles, shellfish in general. So when I got some muscles I boiled them up then made macaroni in the juice left behind. They ate it, they loved it. But I ate about a half cup of the pasta. Just the pasta.

Sickest I’ve ever been in my life. Closest I’ve got to shellfish since is Shrimp. They don’t bother me.

Our family was on a road trip, and I made tuna salad sandwiches in the morning. We ended up never stopping for lunch, and in the evening I went to throw away the sandwiches. “They can’t be that bad,” said my husband, “you only made them this morning.” I gave him a “really?” look and continued to throw the sandwiches away.

Apparently this made my usually intelligent and science-minded husband eager to play the tuna roulette. He grabbed a sandwich and took a small bite “see, they are fine!” I called him crazy and threw the rest away. “You’re going to regret that,” I said.

The next morning, we are getting ready to drive to Bandolier National Monument, about a 45-min drive from our hotel. Everything is fine, my husband is driving. All of a sudden, he says “Shit.”

“What is it, baby?” “I need to go. Like, right now.”

He ends up crouching behind a lone scraggly tree next to the road while pooping pure shit water. The rest of his family pass us by in their other two cars. One of them stops as he wildly gestures for them to keep going. They finally get the hint and leave.

Yeah, we never made it to Bandolier that day. But he only had to shit one more time by the road on the way back to the hotel, so that was a win.

He has since agreed that my food safety knowledge is superior and developed a healthy respect for mayonnaise’s ability to ruin a fun day.

It was the last day of my first year at the university. I had few hours before my ride arrived. And because I was a poor student I was doing everything to eat as cheap as possible. On the day of the move I had no breakfast as I assumed I can hold off until I get home. I was wrong. Luckily for me the place I lived in (it was some sort of a dorm) had a place to leave food that’s no longer needed. It wasn’t spoiled or expired, so everyone could grab something. Unfortunately one of the breads develop mold. I found about it after I was done with couple slices. Long story short, few hour drive home took half a day because I had to hit the bushes every 10 minutes.

My mother made rice in the morning and forgot to put it in the fridge, it was a hot summer day.

When my brother came back from school he decided to eat the rice, not knowing how long it was out. A few bites in he notes the odd taste, nothing major but noticeable, his solution? Add more sauce to drown the weird taste!

Fast forward about an hour, now my brother is puking and shitting it and everything else that was inside of him. So far this is pretty normal right? It can happen to anyone at least once and it wasn’t anything crazy since after one puking/shitting session he felt better and was mostly over it.

About 2 hours later my father comes home, this man does not throw away food as long as it isn’t covered in mold (this means that small amounts of mould are okay to cut out and eat the rest, thia is the level we are talking about) and just to clarify, we had no food shortage or money issues, he is just unwilling to throw away food.

For some reason nobody threw away the rice yet and it was still on the kitchen counter. My father sees the rice and we all immediately warn him that my brother got food poisoning from it and he should not eat it, of course my father, the genius, decides that my brother just has a weak stomach. He takes a bite, notices the weird taste and you guessed it… Drowns it in sauce!

As expected about an hour later he had a similar puking/shitting session, and learned absolutely nothing.

I was on business trip in Atlanta and had nachos at a dive bar. My supplier had put me up in a corner suite overlooking the runway and I spent the night bowl hugging with liquid coming out of both ends. Met my boss at the airport the next morning where he said I looked green… and he upgraded us to FirstClass. It was my first time in FirstClass and I spent it in the lavatory. Got off the plane, had a meeting at the plant, went to the hotel and passed out for 12 hours.

I’ve eaten at Popeyes Chicken restaurants three times in my life, each time at a different location, and all three of those meals gave me food poisoning.

I won’t be going back to Popeyes a fourth time, because I can take a hint.