Topic · Food Safety Course 101
Incubation Period
The delay between the consumption of contaminated food and the appearance of the first symptoms of illness is called the incubation period. This ranges from hours to days (and, in rare cases, months or even years, such as in the case of Listeriosis or Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease), depending on the agent and on how much was consumed. If symptoms occur within 1–6 hours after eating the food, is the most likely culprit is a bacterial toxin or chemical rather than live bacteria.
The long incubation period of many foodborne illnesses tends to cause sufferers to attribute their symptoms to “stomach flu.”
During the incubation period, microbes pass through the stomach into the intestine attached to the cells lining the intestinal walls and begin to multiply there. Some types of bacteria stay in the gut, some produce a toxin that is absorbed into the bloodstream, and some can directly invade the deeper body tissues. The symptoms produced depend on the type of microbe.