Despite the numbers, there are still plenty of restaurants and takeaway stores that just don't understand the important of proper food safety practices.

It can seem like only pot luck if you don't get food poisoning.

We're a nation that loves our takeaway, spend 42 per cent of our food budget on it each year – that’s almost $50 per person per week.

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• Takeaway put to the test
• Sushi dangers
• Hygiene hell

But in some cases we're getting a lot more than we bargain for.

An admission from Dr Rosemary Lester, Victoria's Acting Chief Health Officer should serve as a warning to us all.

“Whenever you eat any food there is always a risk of food poisoning, what we try and do is minimise that risk. It's not possible to guarantee that everything is always safe,” Dr Lester said.

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Buying take away food is a virtual game of chance. More than five and a half million cases are reported each year - that's five and half million people getting sick from buying food.

More than one million visit doctors, 18,000 are hospitalised, and about 120 die from contaminated food every year.

Sushi, Chinese food, modern Australian, Italian, Thai, Indian and Lebanese cuisine all trigger about 12,000 reports of food poisoning every day.

More stories from reporter Clare Brady

A Ballarat pizza parlour is believed to be responsible for eighteen customers falling ill, and the death of an 82-year-old man may also be linked.

Father of one, David Clark knows the extreme fear that comes with contaminated food.

He was temporarily paralysed after eating chicken schnitzel.

“I couldn't bend my toes, and my hands were weak. I was sort of in a daze really, I didn't know what was going on, and my local GP didn't really know what it was either,” Clark said.

In fact bacteria had attacked his nervous system.

Marjorie Harvey is a food safety auditor, and she's seen it all.

“Name and shame might be good, but it might be too late, because people have already got sick, or breached the food laws. Probably stricter controls and more training (would be more effective),” Harvey said.

“I've seen some disgusting things. It's not just restaurants - I work in a wide range of the industry, and I have often been shocked that they've been allowed to get away with some of the practices.”

Her company Australian Food Hygiene Services is kept busy trying to educate our cafes, restaurants and takeaways to clean up their acts.

“A lot of people like to buy their sushi at room temperature because it’s got a better flavour, but there are controls - high risk food have to be kept below five degrees, or a timeframe of how long it can be out, and the general rule is four hours. That’s not just sushi. A lot of high risk food can be out for up to four hours, but if it’s not timed there's lack of control,” she said.

Sushi, especially in summer, is one of our nation's most popular takeaways. But the Japanese cuisine can come at a price.

A previous investigations into sushi found samples crawling with dangerous bacteria.

Nine out of the fifteen shops tested failed.

In Sydney two out of the five sold the most seriously contaminated sushi. In Melbourne four out of five failed, and in Brisbane three out of five shops selling sushi had unsafe levels of bacteria.

Jet Xavier has sworn himself off sushi after several bouts of food poisoning.

“Eating sushi can be like playing Russian roulette with food. I've never been so sick from vomiting and I had diarrhoea as well,” Xavier said.

“I was pretty concerned about if it wasn't going to stop, what was going to happen, and I'd never been that sick before.”