It sounds more like the opening of a James Bond movie than a scene from a restaurant near you: A couple sits down to enjoy a fancy seafood dinner, during which they unknowingly ingest a toxin they can’t taste, see or smell. Within a few hours — sometimes minutes — they succumb to a variety of bizarre symptoms.
After dinner, the victims may have numbness in their fingers, toes or mouth. Difficulty breathing. Vomiting, diarrhea, muscle aches, drooling. Some may even be left with lingering neurological symptoms, such as the reversal of hot and cold sensations (imagine sipping hot coffee and having it feel like ice on your tongue), or the feeling that their teeth are falling out.
This is ciguatera, a nonbacterial foodborne illness from seafood affecting between 50,000 and 500,000 people each year. Although it’s seldom deadly, it can cause people to experience severe gastrointestinal and neurological symptoms. The poison has no antidote. And it can’t be neutralized by cooking, freezing or sterilizing the fish it’s hidden inside.
