While food is an essential source of nutrition and energy, even something healthy to us can turn dangerous quickly. This usually happens through intentional or unintentional contamination during the preparation, storage, and handling of food.
What this woman didn’t expect was that it would deliberately happen in her own home, and the culprit would be her own partner. She was informed by her significant other’s friends that he was putting slugs in her food, and she decided to share everything that unfolded after that online, asking netizens for some guidance.
Food contamination is very dangerous
Image credits: ivankmit (not the actual photo)
This man threatened his partner's health by contaminating her food with slugs
Image credits: AmnajKhetsamtip (not the actual photo)
Image credits: smolbean197
Food contamination with slugs can be very dangerous, as they contain rat lungworm
Intentional contamination of food or food tampering is a serious crime that comes in three different kinds. The contamination can be physical and involve introducing inedible materials into food, such as glass, needles, or other metal and plastic objects. They can cause injury, choking, or tooth damage and introduce harmful microorganisms that may cause diseases.
Food can also be contaminated with chemicals like pesticides, cleaning products, or other toxic substances. Chemical contamination of food tends to be the most severe and can lead to poisoning, vomiting, diarrhea, headaches, and even damage to organs and long-term illnesses.
The last food contamination type is biological, in which the presence of microorganisms, like bacteria, viruses, fungi, and parasites, can cause food spoilage. These contaminants can end up in food through unclean hands, pests, and raw or unwashed food. It’s common among meat products and can result in symptoms like nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal cramps, and fever.
It’s clear that any kind of intentional contamination presents risks to human health. In the case of the protagonist of this story, food contamination with slugs can also be very dangerous, as slugs and snails contain rat lungworm, a parasitic worm that can cause brain infections. While most people who get an infection from rat lungworms don’t have any symptoms, in some cases, it can travel to the brain and cause meningitis, an infection in the brain’s lining that causes inflammation.
Image credits: Dan DeAlmeida (not the actual photo)
A careful examination of the food can help avoid eating contaminated food
The unfortunate news is that food contamination can be hard to detect, especially because people don’t usually expect it. Therefore, it’s important to inspect any food before eating. A careful examination of the food can help avoid eating contaminated food before it’s too late.
The first step should be visually looking at the food and checking it for any foreign objects like hair, metal, glass, and plastic objects. Discoloration and cloudy appearance are also significant indicators of food contamination. Any unusual smells coming from the food mean that it shouldn’t be eaten as well.
Another indicator of food contamination is texture. A slimy, mushy texture is likely a sign of spoiled food that isn’t good for consumption.
To prevent catching a rat lungworm, which can be found in slugs, snails, and unwashed produce, the best practices are to thoroughly wash and cook vegetables, snails, crabs, and shrimps, and check them for suspicious creatures before eating them.
Image credits: SALEM. (not the actual photo)
Commenters encouraged the woman to run from the relationship
Image credits: mstandret (not the actual photo)
Image credits: s_kawee (not the actual photo)
Image credits: smolbean197
And even after the update, they encouraged her to do the same
Image credits: smolbean197
Image credits: smolbean197
