A Crappy Science Article

All about the diarrhea parasite

One of the classes I took in my science degree that I LOVED was foodborne parasites. I forget the exact name of the course, but it was all about the historic to modern pathogens that get into human food and make us sick. It was FASCINATING.

This is where the “Jason getting hit by a car on his bike” story plays when I’m teaching, which my students love. It was for a presentation for this very class that I got smoked by a car and could have died. For me, that day, it was not a food pathogen that was deadly, but an idiot in a car.

Speaking of crappy situations, we have one developing in North America.

And it’s explosive.

The actual culprit has a name: Cyclospora cayetanensis.

Try saying that five times fast, or better yet, use it in Scrabble. It’s a microscopic parasite, and when it gets into your gut it causes something called cyclosporiasis, which is a fancy medical word for “you are not leaving the bathroom for a while as you poo uncontrolably.”

There are other symptoms of this disease which could include:

• Severe Abdominal Cramping

• Bloating

• Nausea

• Fatigue

• Significant Weight Loss

• Severe Dehydration

• and even Death

All joking aside, this infection can land you in the hospital. I was a big fan of The Oregon Trail as a kid, and usually someone in my family died of dysentery, which was the Shigella bacteria — you literally pooped yourself to death. As a kid I thought it was from sitting around being sedentary in the wagon, or maybe that’s what my mom said to force me to get up from the computer.

Ok, back to what’s happening today.

So where’s it coming from? Poop, basically. I know, I know, not the answer you wanted. The parasite spreads through food or water that’s been contaminated with human feces — think produce grown in or rinsed with dirty water. And unlike a lot of the stuff I write about on here, this one does NOT pass cat to human or human to human. It’s strictly a “you ate or drank something bad” situation, and that bad thing was poo.

WHO is washing vegetables and fruit with POO though? WHAT?

Well, you aren’t going to enjoy this, but here we go. There is always a risk of serious contamination in the food we eat raw. Vegetables and fruit usually need intense irrigation, and the water farmers pull from could be contaminated with human feces if it’s pulled from a river or water source where waste treatment failed.

Also, before all this fresh stuff is packed, it’s washed at packing facilities, and the water the food sits in could be contaminated there. Other outbreaks have come from contaminated soil which was treated with sewage sludge or other fertilizers which was once sewage. Or maybe it was some farmhand that picked his butt.

The reason this is now EXPLODING on social media is so many people are being affected. We did a video five days ago when the cases were just under 2,000; now the cases are suspected to be over 7,000... and rising.

Michigan alone has logged over 1,500 cases in 2026, when normally the WHOLE of the US only sees a few hundred a year. Ohio’s at 177 cases. North Carolina’s sitting around 110. Wisconsin, Texas, and a dozen-plus other states are seeing upticks too. At one point the CDC had tallied 145 confirmed cases across 17 states with 20 people hospitalized, and the number’s only climbed since. The CDC is pretty shorthanded in this game and are…well…anyway.

Our country, Canada, is watching this carefully and cutting off the transport of fruit and veggies from south of us for the time being (in some places). I’m way over in Alberta, which is on the western side of Canada, so yes, we are very far away from the problem. However, this problem can easily spread everywhere the food goes.

The frustrating part is nobody’s found the smoking gun yet. Health departments in Ohio and Michigan are working together, interviewing patients, trying to trace it all back to one source, but as of now there’s no confirmed link tying all the cases together. Taco Bell is catching heat on social media right now, and honestly, do people in the States eat that much Taco Bell that thousands of people would get affected? Hold on... I guess if Tim Hortons in Canada got poo parasites in the doughnuts, we would be absolutely merked.

Right now Michigan, New York, Ohio, Illinois, and North Carolina have the highest numbers, and folks are asking what they can do.

If you are in those hard-hit areas, some public health officials are suggesting that if you are immunocompromised and your body likely couldn’t handle two weeks of diarrhea, avoid fresh fruits and veggies unless they come from your garden.

You can wash your produce to decrease your risk, but this pesky parasite resists chlorine (which is in bleaches). Don’t get me wrong, it helps! The parasites are little sticky balls called oocysts which cling and don’t let go. OO-CYST is also the sound your stomach makes from this while you are in the bathroom.

Cooking kills them, so to be the most safe, cook your veggies….and fruit. Gives you an excuse to just have pie.

In the past, bagged salads and pre-cut stuff were the culprit for outbreaks, so maybe avoid that.

Please make sure that if you suspect you have the parasite, you go see a doctor, because there are medical treatments for it that are really effective. I know having a test for the diarrhea parasite only to find out you don’t have the diarrhea parasite means that you thought your diarrhea was so bad you needed a test, is embarrassing. You probably needed to see a doctor anyway.

You don’t want to be the gravestone in a video game. You don’t want to have died of dysentery (which is not from sitting around).

Here are some other monikers for the outbreak that may make you laugh (try not to laugh if you have the diarrhea parasite)

• Code Brown 2026

• The Poopocalypse

• Cyclo-splosion

• The Great American Squirts

• Lettuce Mourn Our Bowels

• The Cilantro Situation

• Basil Betrayal

• Raspberry Ruin (nod to the 2023 outbreak)

• Salad Bar Sabotage

• Cyclospora Chaos

• The Cyclospora Situation

• Cyclo-geddon (this is my favourite)

• The Poo Flu

• The Summer of the Squirts

• America’s Bathroom Crisis

• The Great Gut Punch of 2026

• Diarrhea Nation