food poisoning

How to Eat Street Food Safely While Traveling

Nick Wharton — Wed, 21 Jun 2017 08:31:05 +0000

Many people would never dream of buying street food from a stall when traveling, and with the number of horror stories out there, that's understandable. Reports of widespread contamination and severe food-borne illnesses are common. As a result, choosing the right stall can feel like a minefield if you don't know what to look for.

I've been seriously ill many times in my eight years of traveling, but in my experience, it's nearly as likely to come from a nice sit down restaurant as from a street food stall.

Street stalls are an important part of the culture in many countries, and they are where you'll find some of the most delicious and authentic cuisine. They also happen to be a cheap way to eat well. It pays to be cautious, but there's no need to miss out on street food altogether if you follow a few basic rules. (See also: Eat These 6 Foods to Stay Healthy While Traveling)

Only eat at local mealtimes

Wherever you are, spend a little time figuring out what time people tend to eat their meals. One way to do this is to observe the areas that serve street food and make a mental note of when they get busy. You can also ask a local resident for the inside scoop. Once you're armed with the local mealtimes, stick to them rigidly and make sure that the stall you choose is bustling before you start to order.

If you arrive before or after peak times, you won't know how long the food ingredients have been sitting around. You want a stall with a high turnover, constantly refreshing their ingredients and swapping out utensils and containers. When it comes to street food, it's always best to follow the crowd.

Look closely at the queue

In almost every other aspect of life, queues are looked at as a tedious and unnecessary waste of time. But if there is not a line of people waiting to order at the stall and you've followed the point above, then you should be questioning why.

Put simply, queues mean quality, because people don't stand in line unless they know they're going to get something that's worth waiting for. Consider queues your best friend. They don't just mean that the food will be tasty, but they virtually guarantee that it will be fresh and safe to eat.

In areas where competition for street food vendors is high, this applies even more so. Quite often, street food stalls that sell exactly the same dishes will group together in one place. Though it seems counterintuitive, the economies of agglomeration mean that it's actually beneficial for vendors to do this, as a higher volume of similar stalls attracts a higher number of buyers. Don't go rogue and be the person that chooses to save time by heading to the place with no queue. (See also: 4 Secrets to Eating Great Food for Cheap While Traveling)

Watch the preparation of the food

One of the greatest things about street food is the element of theater that comes with it. Watching chefs elaborately toss ingredients in the air with their wok, or chop fresh produce at lightning speed can be as entertaining an experience as eating the food itself. But more important than the open air performance is the fact that watching the preparation means you can plainly see how hygienic their methods are.

Take a look at the preparation surfaces that are in use: Are they clean as a whistle or covered in flies? Does the stall owner look like they have decent standards of personal hygiene? Where is the raw food being kept? Is it out in the sun or carefully packed away in a cooler or refrigerator? Watch closely for a few minutes before you make your choice, and if you're not happy with how the food is being prepared, move on. (See also: 14 Best Ways to Cut Food Costs While Traveling)

If it doesn't taste right, don't continue

When it comes to food, using the sniff and poke test to determine whether something is safe to eat is not a good idea. Just because it smells fine, that doesn't necessarily mean it's not going to be harmful. Food could appear on the surface to be perfectly fine and still be riddled with illness-causing bacteria. That said, if a dish smells or tastes terrible, then you should definitely err on the side of caution and take it as a sign that something is potentially off or rotten.

A solid rule of thumb to follow is that if it doesn't seem right, then just don't continue eating it. There's no need to be rude, but you should let the cooks know that something doesn't seem quite right, so they don't pass on contaminated food to other customers. You may have paid for it already, but it's really not worth the risk. You should, quite literally, go with your gut in this instance.

Eat cooked food or peelable food

If it's not cooked, or not peelable, then don't let it pass your lips. In many countries, there are delicacies that are made from raw eggs, raw vegetables, and even raw meat. Though they may be lovely and perfectly safe for those who are used to eating them, don't play Russian roulette with your digestive system. If you are desperate to try one of these dishes, then it's far better to go to a restaurant that you have reference-checked thoroughly beforehand than to take a gamble on the street.

Always be sure to check that food is piping hot throughout, as partial heating is a surefire way to encourage bacterial growth. You can always ask for something to be cooked longer if you're unsure. When it comes to fruit, stick to the stuff that's peelable. A removable skin is nature's promise of sterility within.

What to do if the worst does happen

If you do end up getting sick, the first and most important thing to do is remain hydrated by drinking lots of water, because it's essential to replace any fluids you lose when you're sick. Get lots of rest, as it will help your body recover quickly. Remember, most bouts of food poisoning won't last longer than three days. It's not usually necessary to take any medication for sickness or diarrhea and it will ordinarily just run its course naturally.

If your symptoms are severe, or they haven't improved after three days, then you should get in touch with a medical professional to seek further help.

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This article is from Nick Wharton of Wise Bread, an award-winning personal finance and credit card comparison website. Read more great articles from Wise Bread:

Skip the Buffet and Other Simple Rules for Healthier Travel

Deia B — Fri, 29 Aug 2014 11:00:04 +0000

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 20% to 50% of travelers — about 10 million people — get traveler's diarrhea every year. No bull. (See also: How to Travel This Holiday Season Without Getting Sick)

It may be impossible to truly eliminate the risk of getting food poisoning, but you can take some precautions to reduce that possibility.

Food Groups

There are some food groups that are especially risky.

Meat and Seafood

Raw meats and seafood may contain viruses, bacteria, or parasites that can make you sick. It's only when they have been handled and cooked properly that they're safe to eat. If you're not sure the local food safety authority properly monitors eateries, eat only hot meats and seafood that are opaque in color.

Produce

Fruits and vegetables may come into contact with harmful microorganisms in the soil or water where they grow. They can also become contaminated when they're harvested or stored. When it comes to eating raw produce, choose fruits that you can peel like bananas. Even thin-skinned produce like apples and cucumbers benefit from peeling as many common types of pesticide residues and contaminants can't penetrate the peel barrier (though thicker peels make it even harder for contaminants to penetrate). If you have the time to do some grocery shopping yourself, buy any fruits and vegetables you like, then wash them yourself using clean water.

Restaurants to Avoid

When you're dining out, choose your spots carefully.

Buffets

It's safer to eat food that is hot and freshly cooked than food that has been sitting around all day like at buffets. Stick with popular eateries that cook their dishes when you order them and serve many people throughout the day.

Unpopular Restaurants

Look around. Are you the only one about to order? There may be a reason.

Non-Local

Beyond the obvious "you're not in Japan to eat Mexican tacos," local chefs will likely be more familiar with local food than they are with exotic specialities. Meaning eating local can be eating safe.

Before you choose where to eat, ask the locals for recommendations. If you have a travel agent, he could also be a good resource. You can also check out local food blogs or review websites like Yelp.

Water

In many developing countries, tap water is not safe for consumption. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention maintains a database of travel destinations that you can check for country-specific information.

If the tap water at your destination is not safe, you have to boil it first before you drink it. If you prefer to drink cool water, you'll have to boil it in advance and place it in the fridge. This means you'll have to plan ahead.

If that sounds like too much work, drink bottled water. It's clean and safe. Just pay attention to the seal; if it has been broken or tampered with, request another bottle. Make sure the bottle hasn't simply been filled with tap water. In some restaurants in India, waiters would bring the bottle to your table and open it in front of you before pouring the contents into your glass.

Avoid ice cubes because they may have been made using dirty water. Instead, ask for bottled drinks that have been chilled inside a fridge.

Water Purifiers

If you travel a lot, consider buying yourself a portable water purifier, which makes it safe for you to drink tap water anywhere in the world.

One type of water purifier works by filtering out contaminants, letting only clean water through. This filter is available as a stick through which you drink the water. Known as LifeStraw, it can filter up to 1,000 liters of water. It's also available as a water bottle called LifeStraw Go. And best of all: when you buy one LifeStraw, the company provides clean water to one school child in a developing country for a year.

Alternatively, you can also buy a device that works by using ultraviolet light to kill bacteria, viruses and protozoa. It comes in the form of a stick called SteriPEN that you submerge in a glass or water bottle for a few minutes to treat the water.

Another option is to buy water purification tablets that contain iodine. To use, simply dissolve the tablet in water and let it stand for a few minutes before drinking. You can find these tablets at stores that sell camping gear.

Smartphone App

Certain places may be unsafe for travel in the event of an illness outbreak. An iOS app called Sickweather keeps track of these outbreaks, so you know which areas to avoid. The app tracks people's updates on social media and keeps a database of Sickweather users' reports. You can view a map of your local area and filter the information so you only see specific symptoms or illnesses.

Milk

Stick with pasteurized milk, powdered milk, or canned condensed milk that you buy yourself at the local grocery store. Avoid eating or drinking items that contain milk when you eat outside; the milk may have been sitting around all day out in the sun and may have spoiled. There is also some possibility that it hasn't been pasteurized.

Insurance

Despite all your precautions, it's possible that you'll still get food poisoning. That's unfortunate, but your life will be a lot easier if you have travel medical insurance. At the very least, you'll be able to get medical treatments if something happens during the trip.

The right travel insurance for you depends many factors, including your destination and length of stay. Consider what exactly you want the insurance to cover. Do you want your insurer to cover the loss of your laptop or just the cost of medical emergencies? Also take into account what you'll be doing during the trip. If you plan to engage in extreme sports, you may need additional protection on top of the standard policy.

How do you avoid food borne illness while traveling? Please share in comments (your advice, not your illness)!

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This article is from Deia B of Wise Bread, an award-winning personal finance and credit card comparison website. Read more great articles from Wise Bread:

6 Questions to Ask Before You Buy Ground Beef

Steve Klingaman — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 15:00:03 +0000

Do you feel lucky?

That was pretty much the takeaway from a recent, chilling New York Times article about E. coli and ground beef. One hard truth: If only the family of 22-year-old Minnesotan Stephanie Smith had known to ask a few simple questions of the local grocer before buying ground beef, Stephanie might not be paralyzed today.

Stephanie’s Story

In the fall of 2007, Stephanie Smith was a vibrant 20-year-old children’s dance instructor who was stricken with E. coli (O157:H7) poisoning from a hamburger prepared by her mother. After exhibiting symptoms of food poisoning, she was hospitalized with severe complications. Her condition was so serious that she was placed in a coma for nine weeks to facilitate survival.

She experienced kidney failure; she could only breathe with the aid of a respirator. Her life hung in the balance for months. Her survival has been called a miracle. Today, Stephanie struggles to recapture the life she once knew. She may never walk — or dance — again. The agonies she faced and the brave recovery she mounted should not be a part of anyone’s life.

Stephanie’s illness prompted food giant Cargill to recall 844,812 pounds of ground beef patties.

Hamburger Is the Biggest Culprit

You might think people are paid to protect the quality of the food you buy. They are. But current USDA rules do not go far enough to protect our food supply in this category. In the meat department, hamburger is the biggest culprit in spreading E. coli. Why is that? A package of ground beef can include meat from many sources, all combined into a single product. If your ground beef comes from a variety of sources, it is only as good as the weakest link — and we are talking about a long supply chain with lots of permutations. Some of the ground beef in the mix that poisoned Stephanie came all the way from Uruguay!

That this staple of so many family diets is potentially suspect means you need to take special measures to ensure that your family cookout or meat loaf is safe.

Two Rules

One, don’t skimp. The pennies you save on ground beef could cost you big time. Economize on the catsup instead.

Two, buy brand name. Moreover, buy just one brand name — the brand you trust. If you want to alternate between brands, plan to ask the 6 questions for each brand you buy.

Now, a word about our 6 questions: First, you need to find a knowledgeable grocery worker, like a butcher, a meat department manager, or a store supervisor, to interview. Then you need to identify a particular brand about which you are going to inquire. Just because the meat is sold under a brand name does not mean it is safe.

You may have the best luck posing these questions to an actual butcher — the type of trained professional you will find in the meat department of a reputable grocery store. In a warehouse store, it may or may not be difficult to locate a person with sufficient knowledge of the brands it sells. If you can’t find anyone to answer your questions, inform the manager that you will be buying your ground beef elsewhere.

As you know, there are brand names, and then there are brand names. Small, specialty meat suppliers that supply natural beef, grass-fed beef, and organic beef will generally pass the quiz with flying colors. Of course you pay for it — through the nose some would say. Remember, you don’t have to go with a specialty brand but…and this won’t surprise you either…smaller, higher end, and store brands produced by high end chains are most likely to pass muster.

The 6 Questions

1. Do they use beef from a variety of sources combined in a single grind?

2. Do they test ingredients before they are ground?

3. Do they use fatty trimmings purchased from slaughterhouses?

4. Do they use meat derivatives in their ground beef?

5. Do they use imported beef?

6. Have they been cited for recent food safety violations

Not so hard. You don’t have to be a food scientist to master these. Just print them out and bring them with you to the store.

Using a simple Good/Not-so-Good scale, you can probably guess the correct answers. Test ingredients — good. Meat derivatives — not so good.

What the Answers Mean

Let’s put some anticipated answers in context:

1. Do they use beef from a variety of sources combined in a single grind?

Some meet processors do not combine sources. This is better by far. It means they deal with a single supplier and can therefore better ensure quality. Some have longstanding relations with their suppliers. A few are, in effect, their own suppliers.

If the processor does combine meat from a variety of sources — and most do — testing is all the more important.

2. Do they test ingredients before they are ground?

Most don't test until after the beef is combined with products from a variety of sources and ground. Some say this is due to processor fears about implicating sub-par suppliers. But what you don’t know can hurt you. So press this point, particularly if the processor uses beef from a variety of sources. Is it a deal breaker? (In my mind, yes.) Most likely, if the company that processed Stephanie’s ground beef tested before grinding, she would be dancing today.

3. Do they use fatty trimmings purchased from slaughterhouses?

Fatty trimmings are 50% fat. Who wants that in their diet? Besides, processors routinely treat the trimmings with ammonia to rid the meat of bacteria. Ugh! Who wants that? Ammonia is for cleaning glass.

4. Do they use meat derivatives in their ground beef?

Call it slop. Or worse. Meat derivatives are unacceptable in every case.

5. Do they use imported beef?

Some imported beef comes from Canada. No problem there. The Canadian system is more stringent than that of the U.S. The Canadians have adopted the National Cattle Identification System using RFID ear tags to identify each individual cow before it leaves the herd. The system employs these radio frequency tags to track down problems before they get out of hand. A similar system is under discussion for implementation in the U.S.

Beef from South America is a different story. Though U.S. inspectors go abroad for periodic checks, sometimes they find problems. They did in Uruguay. And in between inspections, who knows? Beef imported from South America should be tested in advance. The odds are it is not.

6. Have they been cited for recent food safety violations?

What are violations? Ask about recalls or, more commonly, citations issued. In some cases, like Stephanie's, USDA inspectors say meat processors don't follow their own rules.

“Every time we look, we find out that things are not what we hoped they would be,” said Loren D. Lange, an executive associate in the Agriculture Department’s food safety division.

The USDA has its own problems. It is designed to promote and regulate food production. Those are two very different missions. So it has an inherent conflict of interest in its role as watchdog. Unfortunately, that means that just because the USDA knows meat processors aren't exactly following the rules doesn't mean the agency will protect you.

For example, when the USDA conducts routine inspections of meat processing plants they often schedule them with the processor in advance. Given that we know that some food processors cut corners, why make it so easy to cheat?

Asking My Grocers

I tried out the 6 questions on three retail operations: a better quality regional grocery chain outlet, a “big box” grocer, and a stand-alone butcher shop.

The man at the meat counter at the reputable grocery store focused on two brands, both small producers. One provided grass fed beef; the other did not. My grocer knew all the answers. What’s more, he welcomed my questions. Both of these vendors used single source beef; both tested and retested their beef. Neither used questionable byproducts. In addition, the store offered its own grind. On the subject of testing, my grocer volunteered that the store engaged an outside testing firm to conduct random tests of its own meat counter operations. Did I feel safe with these producers? Yes.

The meat department person at the big box store was friendly, knowledgeable, and offered that the brand of ground beef in question was multi-sourced, and tested before grinding. He didn’t know some of the other details.

The butcher, as you might expect, knew his wares thoroughly and spoke with pride about the relationship he had with his single-source, long-term supplier. He grinds some of his own beef, too.

So, three retailers, three approaches to ground beef safety. Though I was encouraged by the answers provided by the big box store, I still needed more information — for example, did the supplier use fatty trimmings in the grind? That information was not forthcoming from the higher ups. They invited me to put my question in writing, something the average consumer is not likely to do.

The Takeaway

Is asking a few questions a fail-safe measure? No, not exactly. But, given a climate of uncertainty about the safety of ground beef, it can help you avoid the “I dunno” factor. Asking about the origins of your food supply is a fundamental tool with which to protect your family against unsafe meat products.

And of course, none of this eliminates the necessity of safe food handling practices in your own kitchen. Remember the essence of the final question we asked: do you follow your own rules?

The E. coli outbreak that sickened Stephanie Smith is estimated to have sickened 940 people. An outbreak can sicken thousands across any number of states.

According to the USDA, less than .5% of ground beef is contaminated with E. coli. But then, inspecting meat is a little like inspecting the breaks on a school bus. The failure rate is low, but the human cost is off the charts.

Food safety is ultimately up to you.

Guest Post Blurb:

This is a guest post by Steve Klingaman, a nonprofit development consultant and nonfiction writer living in Minneapolis.

This article is from Steve Klingaman of Wise Bread, an award-winning personal finance and credit card comparison website. Read more great articles from Wise Bread: