Food poisoning costs the NHS £79.2 million a year, based on around 2.4 million illnesses and 16,300 hospitalisations across the UK annually, according to figures from the Food Standards Agency. The numbers were revealed by Diana Johnson, minister of state for the Department of Health and Social Care, in response to a parliamentary question from shadow minister Andrew Snowden.
Doctors call for behaviour changes
Physician Dr Naheed Ali said treating foodborne illness is “one of the few multi-million-pound NHS costs that could be cut substantially by behaviour changes that cost nothing at all”.
“The £79.2million figure understates the true burden, because it only captures what the NHS pays,” he told the Express. “It doesn’t count the lost work days, the unpaid carers or the long tail of post-infectious complications that most people never connect back to a bad meal.”
Simple kitchen precautions
Dr Ali said most preventative measures are simple, if “unglamorous”. Fridges, he noted, should sit at or below 5C - “a surprising number of domestic fridges I’ve heard patients describe are running far warmer because the dial has never been checked”.
Cooked food left out for more than two hours in a warm room is particularly risky, he said, as bacteria such as Bacillus cereus and Staphylococcus aureus - which produce heat resistant toxins - can multiply quickly. Reheating won’t destroy toxins that have already formed, which is why rice and pasta are “repeat offenders”.
Many of the 16,000 annual hospitalisations, Dr Ali added, are “effectively dehydration events” in older adults, young children and people with chronic illness, cases that oral rehydration, started early, can often prevent.
Hygiene measures and official guidance
Dr Deborah Lee, of Dr Fox Online Pharmacy, pointed to research suggesting that good food hygiene can lower the risk of gastroenteritis by around 51%.
“This includes hand washing before and after handling food or using the toilet, with warm water and soap,” she said. Symptoms of food poisoning, she added, commonly include nausea, vomiting, watery diarrhoea and abdominal cramping, with fever, fatigue and muscle pain also possible in some cases.
Dr Lee also recommends using separate chopping boards and knives for meat and fish, washing worktops and utensils thoroughly with warm soapy water and cooking food at the correct temperature for the right amount of time. “The best protection occurs when multiple food hygiene measures are taken at the same time,” she said.
Narriman Looch, Head of Food Hygiene and Foodborne Disease at the Food Standards Agency said: "Public safety is our highest priority and we work closely with partners to closely monitor foodborne disease and to protect public health. We support businesses to meet their food safety obligations through the Food Hygiene Rating Scheme, free guidance such as our Safer Food Better Business packs, and close partnerships with local authority food teams.
"We are committed to supporting businesses to meet their legal responsibility to keep food safe, and we encourage consumers to check Food Hygiene Ratings at food.gov.uk when they are eating out. People can reduce their risk of food poisoning at home by following the 4Cs of food hygiene: chilling, cleaning, cooking, and avoiding cross-contamination."
The Department of Health and Social Care has also been contacted for comment.
