Food is sustenance; it provides necessary nutrients to sustain life and, when done right, it can be a gratifying gustatory experience.
Unfortunately, far too often, food can also just make you sick -- or worse.
More than four in 10 Americans say they've become ill during the past two years because of something they've eaten, according to a recent Harris Interactive poll, "Have You Become Sick From Something You Ate?"
Combine that high level of personal experience with food-related illnesses with massive recalls of spinach, peanut butter and other products in recent years, and you get a lot of food fear across the nation.
Justin Sullivan, Getty Images
The Harris Interactive poll found that fresh meat was the biggest concern Americans have about their food supply. Here, a butcher works at a meat packing facility in San Francisco in 2008.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 76 million new cases of food-related illness -- resulting in 5,000 deaths and 325,000 hospitalizations -- occur in the United States each year.
One-quarter of those surveyed in the Harris poll who indicated they became sick from something they ate have removed that food from their diet. Another 15 percent indicate that they advised family, friends and co-workers to do the same.
One experience with tainted food increases the chances people will be reluctant to eat other foods as well.
Harris found that 73 percent of all those polled were at least somewhat concerned about the safety of all fresh foods. Sixty-four percent felt the same way about packaged foods, 59 percent about canned foods and 54 percent about frozen foods.
Respondents said their food safety concerns centered on fresh meats (31 percent), fresh poultry (23 percent) and fresh fish (20 percent), and to a lesser degree fresh vegetables (16 percent) and fresh fruit (8 percent).
"The reality is that no one benefits when problems with our nation's food supply emerge. Consumers deselect food products, food manufacturers and suppliers suffer from the backlash in the form of reduced sales, and government feels the pressure to act," says Chris McAllister, senior research director, public affairs and policy research, for Harris Interactive.
In addition to that must-have-been-something-I-ate experience, the cost of food-related illnesses is just as nauseating.
Each case of food-borne illness costs an average $1,850 in health care, workplace and other economic losses, according to another recent study by a former U.S. Food and Drug Administration economist.
All told, food-borne illnesses costs the United States an estimated $152 billion per year in losses, according to the report "Health-Related Costs From Foodborne Illness in the United States" by the Produce Safety Project, the work of The Pew Charitable Trusts at Georgetown University.
An interactive map, online at MakeOurFoodSafe.org, breaks down the costs of food-borne illness by state.
"This study puts the problem of food-borne illness in its proper perspective and should help facilitate reasonable action designed to mitigate this problem," says Pew Trust report author Robert L. Scharff, a former FDA economist who is now an assistant professor in the Department of Consumer Sciences at Ohio State University.
