Food Poisoning Sickens About 48 Million Americans a Year

Food poisoning is not a rare event. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 48 million people get sick from a foodborne illness every year. Most recover, but not all. Of those 48 million, the CDC estimates that 128,000 are hospitalized and 3,000 die each year. These figures are estimates, and the CDC presents them as estimates, not as a count of reported cases. Put another way, the numbers describe a risk that touches a large share of the country in a single year. Hospital stays and deaths are a small fraction of the total, but in absolute terms they are not small: 128,000 hospital admissions and 3,000 deaths each year are attributed to something people ate or drank. The CDC page that gives these numbers is a short summary of the agency’s national estimates of foodborne illness in the United States.