Unveiling the Real Facts: You Cannot Get HIV From Food

HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus) infection is one of the most feared diseases these days. The reason lies in the fact that the infected population continues to multiply in number every year. Approximately 1.5 million people are already infected with the virus as of 2003 and undeniably, it seems like there is no stopping the spread of this disease. Everyone – regardless of their social class, age, gender, and race – is at risk. To deliberately decrease one’s risk for acquiring the infection, everybody should equip themselves of the essential HIV facts.

The essential information: How can one get an HIV infection?

Contrary to popular misconceptions, there is no such thing as HIV from food. Though there are many people who have that unfounded fear that you can get HIV from eating foods that have been “contaminated” with the blood of an HIV infected person, such is quite impossible. According to current researches by notable experts and based on the fact sheets provided by the Center for Disease Control (CDC), HIV cannot spread through non-sexual day to day activities. In fact, you cannot get HIV even if you come in casual contact with an HIV-infected person. Instead, you can only acquire or spread the disease through the following situations:

•    Having unprotected sex with an HIV-infected person
•    Sharing needles with an HIV infected person when injecting drugs, making tattoos, or piercing ears.
•    Conceiving a baby while you are diagnosed being HIV positive

Why you cannot get HIV from food

According to studies and researches made by medical experts, HIV will not be able to survive outside the body. This just means that based on present researchers, environmental transmission of HIV or HIV transmission through remote environmental mediums is quite impossible.

In general, the blood, semen, vaginal secretions, breast milk, saliva, and tears of an infected person will contain different concentrations of HIV. However, though such substances can potentially contaminate environmental mediums, people cannot get HIV from food because the substance dies as soon as it is no longer inside a human body.

In fact, laboratory studies on the survival of HIV showed that even the artificial laboratory-grown HIV can only be kept alive for days only if it under very controlled conditions inside a lab. What’s more is that drying high concentrations of artificial HIV can diminish the amount of the virus by almost 99 percent in just a few hours.

As such, researches concluded that because the HIV concentrations used in the laboratory researches is much higher than those which can be found in the blood, drying actual infected body fluids will reduce the transmission risk to zero percent. Furthermore, experts note that HIV cannot reproduce outside its living host (except under laboratory conditions). Thus, it can be concluded that body fluids could not be used to spread HIV from food. GP