How long can symptoms of food poisoning last?

Answer 1

Food poisoning is a technical term, believe it or not. It refers to contamination by biological agents which, as a result of being in contact with the food, generate substances toxic to the people eating the food. An example of this would be Botulism - the agent is Clostridium botulinum, and the toxin is named after the agent. The agents themselves can be destroyed through cooking, but once the toxin is in the food, standard cooking temperatures will not do the job.
This is distinguished from food-born infection, in which the biological agents themselves infect the person and cause illness. Salmonella is a good example. As the problem is biological (and not a specific poison/substance), cooking temperatures are usually sufficient to prevent illness.


This mini lesson is a quick way to show that the answer to your question depends on several factors. Is it an infection? If so, symptoms wont show until the biological agents have had time to "cultivate" inside the person's body. For the vast majority of infections, symptoms wont appear for 8-48 hours. If instead you're dealing with food poisoning, symptoms can appear as fast as an hour to as long as 3-5 days.

Answer 2

The human digestive track takes about 24 hours to process food end to end. It is unlikely, if not impossible, that food poisoning would kick in days later. A parasitic infection might get you a few days later however.

There are several foodborne agents that can kick in several days or even months later. Trichinella spiralis, Salmonella typhi and even botulism can take days. See Related Links for a chart.

Answer 3

Food poisoning typically only lasts for a few days. However, some people are hypersensitive to some bacteria and they can get very sick and be very sick for quite some time. Sometimes, people even die from it.Yes that is very true but in some case's of food poisoning it can last from month's to a year causing a person to have headache's,vomiting,nausea,dizzeness,sweating,fever,fatigue,diarrhea,muscle ache's and pain's aswell as abdominal pain's and cramp's etc.

Answer 4

Food poisoning can last anywhere from 1 day to 2 weeks, it all depends on the type of food poisoning you have. The most common type of food poisoning is staph food poisoning and it only lasts for 1-2 days at the most.
The worst case of food poisoning I ever had lasted from about 8PM one evening to 5AM the next morning. I spent the entire time throwing up for more than 10 minutes then going back to bed for less than 5 minutes. Even though the food poisoning itself was over that morning, my stomach was very sensitive and it took nearly 3 weeks of slowly increasing my food intake to return to normal without throwing up most of what I had just eaten.