What's behind America's diarrhoea outbreak?
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Today's episode was made possible by our friends over at Revro Fitness. Ready? And good morning. This is the Daily Oz. This is the Daily Oz. This is the Daily Oz. Oh, now it makes sense.
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Good morning and welcome to The Daily Oz. It is Thursday, the 23rd of July. I'm Sam Kozlowski.
I'm Zara Seidler.
Nearly 7,000 Americans have been struck down by a gut parasite and some very explosive diarrhea linked to Taco Bell lesseuse across 34 US states. On today's podcast, we're going to explain how the outbreak started, why scientists think it has spread so quickly, and whether US federal budget cuts are making it harder to stop.
I, for one, am absolutely thrilled that I have been asked to join the podcast on the day that we talk about explosive diarrhea. Yeah. As someone in our comment section said when we posted this, thank God it's not just being described as diarrhea, but in fact explosive diarrhea.
And it's in every media report.
Every single one. It's very descriptive. It's very evocative. It's certainly not usually what I feel like listening to or reading first thing in the morning.
But it also kind of makes you a bit curious because I feel like when these sorts of mass food stories come out, there's a little bit of it could be me.
A hundred percent. Well, I guess on that note, we should start by setting the scene that this is happening in the US. You're not at risk of explosive, I'm not going to get through this podcast, of explosive diarrhea here in Australia if you're eating lettuce, because this hasn't been detected here. Talk me through, I guess, top level, what do people need to know about this story?
So the scientific name is called cyclosuriasis.
Prefer explosive diarrhea.
Yeah. It's kind of maybe that's why the media is using it as a bit of a crutch, but it's an intestinal illness caused by a microscopic parasite that your body ingests in some way. It's smaller than a human red blood cell. And the signature symptom, as you've mentioned a couple of times already, is profuse explosive watery diarrhea. There was one scientific paper.
Thank you.
There was one scientific paper I was reading that explains that it's the type of diarrhea that's like an all get out. like a mass evacuation. That's revolting. This is actually important.
Okay. We're hitting the big topics here.
We're going to get through this. You also get appetite loss, unsurprising, stomach cramps.
I have appetite loss listening to this.
Yeah, bloating, fatigue, and a low-grade fever. Now it shows up one week after you're exposed to the parasite. It can relapse and last for weeks without treatment, but it is treatable and most people do improve within a couple of days.
thrilled to hear it. How are people being exposed to this in the first place, though? Like, why has this become a story on the scale, perhaps other than the fact that it's a little bit funny? It is actually quite serious. Yeah. How has this story come to be?
Well, the FDA, which is the Food and Drug Administration, kind of equivalent to some of the food safety bodies that we have here, maybe perhaps the TGA's remit is captured there as well. And the CDC, which is the disease control body we all got to know quite well during the pandemic, They've both been watching the outbreak that obviously starts getting reported from a local hospital level in some of the key states. And what they've found is that it's connected to shredded iceberg lettuce from Taylor Farms in Mexico that's been served at Taco Bell, one of the most popular fast food joints across the U.S.,
The end of that sentence ruined what I was going to say, which is that this is why I don't eat vegetables. But I do eat fast food famously and I love tacos. So unfortunately I am not insulated from this.
Well, it's probably one of the least offensive vegetables out there, a sprinkling of iceberg lettuce on a taco. Now Taco Bell says that all affected lettuce has already been removed. What's really important though is that it's really hard to test for and it's really hard to track. So no food sample has actually returned a confirmed positive for this parasite.
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