What happens if you eat uncooked chicken

Symptoms can begin within a few hours of consuming the food and, depending on the bacteria, DiGeronimo notes, the illness can last up to a week. Plus those symptoms — particularly diarrhea and vomiting — can lead to dehydration, too, so drink plenty of water. The big thing about protecting yourself from food poisoning, DiGeronimo says, is making sure you cook your chicken to an internal temperature of F.

Besides properly cooking your chicken, though, there are other ways to make sure your chicken stays fresh. And, yes, you can freeze it in its original packaging. Raw chicken should be cold to touch when buying at the store or before cooking at home, says DiGeronimo.

The chicken should also be pink and moist — but not slimy. Although undercooking is one of the ways you can get sick from chicken, other handling errors can cause the same unpleasant result.

All living creatures, including humans, are filled with countless varieties of microorganisms. Only a relatively small number of these, referred to collectively as pathogens, have the potential to make us sick. Of those pathogens, only a handful are routinely found on chicken. They include:. Each of these has numerous substrains and regional variations, which differ in their ability to cause misery, but overall there's a broad similarity in the symptoms.

Although these pathogens are different biologically, mostly they cause very similar symptoms. You'll feel cramping and pain in your abdomen, have nausea and vomiting, and usually experience diarrhea as well.

These symptoms might be accompanied by a low grade fever, though it isn't always present. The time required to feel the effects of your ill-starred meal vary widely: from 2 to 36 hours for enterococcus; as few as 4 hours for E.

This means there's often a possibility that it wasn't the chicken at all that's causing your current unhappiness, but a previous meal.

The good news is, that while you'll probably wish you were dead for a few hours, foodborne illness won't usually kill you. In fact, you've probably shrugged it off many times already in your life, dismissing it as the "stomach flu" or "hour flu" and not recognizing it as the price of improperly prepared food.

In healthy adults, the symptoms are usually short-lived and go away within 1 to 4 days. When cooking a whole chicken, a person can pierce the thickest part of the leg — which is between the drumstick and the thigh — to check the temperature of the meat, ensuring that they do not allow the meat thermometer to touch the bone, fat, or gristle.

They can also check that the meat is white. The juices from a properly cooked chicken will be clear and not cloudy. A person can purchase a meat thermometer online here. Cooking chicken thoroughly and being careful about food preparation is the best way to avoid foodborne infection. It is not only eating raw chicken that can cause illness but also improper handling and preparation.

A person can purchase a refrigerator thermometer online here. A person should seek medical help if they are at a higher risk of developing complications or are unable to retain fluids. Anyone experiencing a foodborne illness should get plenty of rest, sip fluids regularly, and seek medical help if symptoms persist for more than a few days. Eating contaminated food can lead to diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, and abdominal pain.

It can also cause inflammation and develop into stomach flu. Meats contain bacteria that are harmful if they enter the body. Due to this, some people wash meat before preparing it, but this is unsafe.

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