Can you get sick or food poisoned from a vegan or vegetarian restaurant?

Question

I once got sick from going to a vegan restaurant and ordering a steamed artichoke with tofu aioli. I went home a was very nauseous and threw up. A friend says it is impossible to get sick from restaurants that do not serve meat or dairy. Is this true? It would seem logical to me that bacteria knows no bounds and can contaminate any type of food, no?

Answer 1

Of course you can get food poisoning from vegetables. Some of the common 'meat based' bacteria can be carried by vegetables such as lettuce. Many yeast also cause poisonings, and are commonly found on many fruits and cereal, particularly on some organic as they're not so well removed by older permitted fungicides. There's high poison concentrations on several parts of fruits such as rhubarb leaves, spinach is also affected at a very low level....

Answer 2

Bacteria can contaminate anything but it just depends on the kind of bacteria if they left the food out for a few hours or so bacteria would crawl all over it and contaminate it and it depends on the cleanliness and how well taken care of the food was not only meat and dairy products can be contaminated anything can be contaminated.

Answer 3

You can definitely get sick from a vegetarian restaurant. E coli can be found even in organic produce. It is very important to use fresh vegetables and wash them thoroughly.

At the market you can find vegetable washes, and it is best to check out the restaurants that you frequent.

Unfortunately, some 'health food' stores and restaurants do not have the best hygiene. I once heard someone say that she was 'saving water' as if that was a good thing for the environment.

Of course, we do want to conserve water, but there are good and necessary uses for it as well! I heard of a child who became deaf because of e coli consumed from organic greens. Her mother had thought that because they were organic, they did not have to be washed.

Our ignorance can have tragic consequences.

Answer 4

It is unfortunate that some folks do not realize that bacterial growth can occur on most foods. Too many people are quick to judge a food escpecially if you have some sort of bias against it.

I have not watched any reports lately, but in the late 1990's "alfalfa sprouts" were listed as one of the top food items for food poisoning in California. Food items with any level of moisture in or around the food at room temperatures are very likely to start colonizing various forms of bacteria.

Not all bacteria is bad, but like any food item, too much of any one thing is not good.

Answer 5

Food in generally shouldn't be a big problem if you do your own cooking and grocery shopping. I'm sure going lacto-ovo you've noticed that there's a lot of Vegan substitutes for many different types of food. The sites below have information of how to supplement the vitamins and nutrients you would get from other food and recipes.

Answer 6

Most likely the veggies were not washed properly and undercooked (where the bacteria didn't die). Also possible is that the food is contaminated with bacteria (unclean utensils, spoiled oil, direct contaminants like the cook is sick,etc)

Everything has bacteria. So, yes it's possible to get food poisoning.

Answer 7

Anything can give you food poisoning if it is stored incorrectly or contaminated by bacteria. It would not necessarily be the same bacteria as in meat and proteins (i.e. listeria or salmonella) but if even the tofu (or other ingredients used) are stored incorrectly then it is possible.

Another possibility is that you are intolerant to one of the ingredients.

Answer 8

Let's say I just went to the bathroom, wiped my butt and smeared my hand a little bit with the brown stuff. I very quickly rinsed my hands off (no soap) and toweled them dry.

I then go into the back kitchen of my restaurant and prepare a garden fresh Cesar salad, making sure to toss the lettuce and stuff with my freshly rinsed off hands. Do you think there was any transference of bacteria from my hand to the salad?

Oh, and this hypothetical is based from something I actually saw with my own two eyes. Here's another one:

A chef sneezes into his hands then wipes "it" off on his apron. He then proceeds to chop vegetables to put in salad bar dispensers. Was there any transference of the sneeze onto the chopped vegetables?

Anyone who thinks that germs can't collect on vegetables because they aren't meat is a blazing idiot. Yes, you can get food poisoning from a vegan restaurant, and I'm even willing to bet $100 that one of the above scenarios actually happened to your food. Sorry.

Answer 9

Yup....bacteria grows on any type of food. Actually it tends to grow on the stuff used to cook the food.
Did you check the Sanitation Grade before eating?

Answer 10

Most of the bacteria that causes food poisoning is consumed through meats, however bacteria can grow on anything, so it is just as possible that you might get food poisoning at a vegan restaurant than at a barbecue joint. However it is considerable less LIKELY.