are there REALLY any safe foods?

[purpleteacher]

Okay, I have been thinking - now, thinking with a paniced and possibly irrational frame of mind - but I have been thinking about is there any food that is truly "safe". Safe = will not give me any chance of food poisoning or getting ill. I don't think there is because the if the incumbation period for food poisoning can really be as long as 72 hours, then anything we eat could make us sick.


How will I know until it is too late if food has made me sick? I sometimes see eating as too great of risk to take to avoid V*. Why even eat if there is a chance I am going to sick? Getting sick defeats the purpose of eating. It is like I'm playing a game of chance with food because I don't believe there is such a thing as a true "safe food" because I won't ever know until 72 hours later.


The scary thing is I see this scientific experiement going on in my head as I eat one thing, wait 72 hours, and then eat something else and wait another 72 hours, etc... just trying to figure out what might make me sick --- yet I know that getting sick has more variables in it than just food. So if I remove one variable at a time from the equation, I increase my odds at staying healthy. The variable I choose to remove is the food from the equation, yet without food I will die. The variable I remove causes my experiment to eventually stop because its participant dies, making the experiment unethical and not legal to do. ***I love research and doing experiments in psychology (that was my undergraduate major). Sorry for the psychobabble... but it makes some twisted sense to me in my head.***


Am I just totally losing it and letting my anxiety get to me or does anyone else see where I am coming from?Edited by: purpleteacher

[shiva]

Well, think of it this way.. The more we are in contact with the bacteria in food that could possibly make us sick, the more immune we become to that bacteria and the better our bodies fight them without us getting sick.


The idea is not to stop eating. We need food in order to be healthy. The better idea is to strengthen our immune systems, this way even when we are exposed to these strains of bacteria, our bodies will fight them off without us getting sick.


It's all about being healthy. Both physically and metally. It goes hand in hand.

[purpleteacher]

I have an eating disorder, not medically dx-ed, but I have one. I am scared that the food will kill me... not make me fat. I'm a big girl and I'll never be thin, but that isn't the reason I don't eat --- it is because I'm scared the food will make me sick. I want to be thinner, but that isn't my underlying driving force. Food makes me anxious because I am literally petrifed that what I eat will make me sick.