Food poisoning becoming common, but our stomach should not get used to it

I had to be hospitalized for severe dehydration, and it took a full week of getting IV fluids before I recovered.

That was the worst episode of food poisoning I have ever experienced. It happened during my second year at university, after a VND3,000 (US$0.11) street meal near the campus.

Memories of that cramped, suffocating pain in my stomach flooded back when I read the news about hundreds of people in Ho Chi Minh City falling ill after eating banh mi.

Incidents like this are no longer rare; they happen again and again with all kinds of street food.

In 2023 the famous Phuong’s banh mi shop in Hoi An had poisoned hundreds of people. The famous shop was fined nearly VND100 million and closed for three months.

In 2024, by the end of November, there had been 131 food poisoning outbreaks, affecting 4,796 people and causing 21 deaths, according to the Ministry of Health.

In the same period in 2023 the number of affected people had been a little over half, and 14 had died.

Ingredients used for sandwiches at the famous Phuong's banh mi shop in Hoi An in central Vietnam, December 2021. Photo by VnExpress/Dac Thanh

Data from the two years shows that, though the number of incidents had not spiked, the number of victims did because the outbreaks happened at a large scale, in settings where food quality and hygiene were hard to control.

Food poisoning is often linked to contamination by microorganisms or harmful toxins. The usual culprits include Salmonella, E. coli, Staphylococcus aureus, and toxin-producing molds. But the root cause lies in carelessness, such as not washing vegetables properly, leaving food for too long at room temperature, reusing frying oil, and sloppy cooking practices.

Each outbreak exposes the same things: food vendors' poor hygiene, regulators' lax oversight and consumers' own complacency.

And we have arguably heard more than enough warnings about the need for stricter food safety oversight and tougher penalties.

But in a country where every street has hundreds of food stalls and each stall serves thousands of customers, no agency can possibly check them all, and no fine can outweigh the lure of quick and easy profits.

Of course, consumers can absolutely protect themselves. But our weakness lies in how easily we accept convenience. I am an example. After my hospitalization, the doctor told me: "Cheap does not always mean unsafe, but you should choose food with a clear source and clean preparation."

All this seems evident enough, but in practice it is nearly impossible to know by just looking.

And amid our busy lives, it is impossible to give up the convenience that street food offers.

All I can do is be a little more careful, maybe by picking places I believe are clean and trustworthy, while still living with the fear that one day I could land in the hospital again because of someone else’s negligence.

People who have not been traumatized by food poisoning like I have are likely to be even more careless.

Almost every Vietnamese person has experienced at least one episode of "stomach shock" from food.

Most cases might be mild, with just a few hours of mild pain or bloating, and that fosters complacency and lowers expectations of food hygiene.

Once, when we went out for noodle soup, someone in our group suddenly changed their order and opted for coffee and packaged snacks instead. He explained that he had just seen the vendor wipe her hands on a dirty cloth and then pick up the noodles with her bare hands.

He had a sensitive stomach and was afraid. We gently mentioned it to the vendor, but most of us shrugged it off with the cliched "Our stomachs are used to it."

This idea of "training the stomach" is, in fact, letting illness take root. That is precisely the meaning of the old saying "your mouth cause your body to suffer".

Biologically, the digestive system cannot "get used to" unsanitary or contaminated food in any healthy way.

When the body encounters small amounts of bacteria or viruses, the mucosal immune system can learn to recognize and defend against them. But repeated or prolonged exposure can cause chronic inflammation of the intestinal lining, impair absorption and damage long-term health.

In short, our tolerance for unhygienic food eventually comes with a heavy cost.

The ideal solution to reduce food poisoning in Vietnam is strict compliance with safety standards by vendors paired with strong regulatory oversight.

But while waiting for that to happen, each of us can become inspectors of our own food.

Refusing dirty, unhygienic or untraceable food is also a way consumers can help eliminate careless vendors and support those who make an honest effort to do things properly.

The stomach cannot get used to dirty food, and society must not get used to carelessness.