Food poisoning: Part I of when good food goes bad

Things can go wrong when you're eating in a restaurant. Then you're left spitting an undercooked burger into a trash can or waiting in a 20-minute line when you're already late for work. It's time to take a look at the dark side of the food industry.

Getting sick of food isn't a big deal. Just eat something else. But getting sick from food can leave you with a permanent sour taste in your mouth.

Now, there are different varieties of food poisoning. Some of them are more severe than others. Last week I think I picked up one of the less-serious types.

But it's hard to be sure if you really have food poisoning, or even if you're sick. So I'm going to conceal the establishment that I believe passed me a little stomach-borne bug. I wouldn't want to unfairly ruin their reputation.

I picked up a tuna-sub at the unnamed establishment and began chowing down. Before I started I was pretty hungry for tuna. By the time I finished, I really didn't want to taste tuna for the rest of my life. That probably should have been a warning to stop eating.

Yet I continued to eat like some sort of little old lady swallowing a fly. I don't know why I did it, but I paid for it later.

Fortunately nothing came back up the hatch. My stomach just twisted itself into knots and rejected any notion of food. The next day was the killer, though. When I woke up in the morning, every muscle in my body ached and I couldn't shake that exhausted feeling. It was similar to dehydration or the sensation you get from a low-grade fever. Only the aches were worse and I drank plenty of water to rehydrate. Plus, I had a normal temperature.

It took a day before I started to feel better. That's a trademark of food poisoning: It doesn't last much more than 24 hours but makes you feel terrible.

Looking back, I can't be sure it was food poisoning. But it doesn't matter. I don't trust the tuna from this unnamed establishment anymore. And that's where the good food really went bad. I can no longer eat a meal I like because of a bad experience.

Let that be a lesson to you. When your tuna tastes fishy, throw it back. If you don't you could be up the creek without a paddle.