> I knew someone who said he couldn't eat in restaurants, cafeterias, etc, because "all the food they serve is infected with salmonella" and that he ALWAYS gets very ill whenever he eats out. I'm guessing he actually has an immune hypersensitivity to camplyobacter instead, which is a bacteria found on nearly everything.
>

Or it could be psychosomatic. I learned about that in my nutrition class last year... people who make themselves sick simply because they have convinced themselves of it.

The (true) example my professor gave was this: One of his colleagues was treating a woman who swore up and down that she was allergic to milk. Sure enough, whenever she drank milk or ate something that she knew contained milk, she had a violent reaction. But when he gave her milk in tablet form (telling her it was a medicine), there was no reaction.

Finally he tested like so: she had a stomach tube put down her throat but remained concious. He told her he was first going to put milk down in her stomach. (The tube was opaque so she could not see anything in it.) She had a violent reaction to the substance. Then he told her he was putting water down there. No reaction.

Then he told her that he had actually put water in the first time (when she had the reaction) and milk the second (no reaction). She was astonished, they worked on it, and she's not 'allergic' to milk anymore. It was all psychosomatic.

Interesting how the mind can affect the body, isn't it?

Sosi"it's all in your head"qui