Should I take special measures with food and water in other

Question: Should I take special measures with food and water in other countries?
Answer: Yes. Not all countries have high standards of food hygiene. You need to take special care abroad, particularly in developing countries. Follow these rules when in other countries:

* Do not eat uncooked fruits and vegetables unless you can peel them. Avoid salads.

* Eat cooked foods while they are still hot.

* Boil all water before drinking it. Use only ice made from boiled water. Drink only canned or bottled drinks or beverages made with boiled water.

* Steaming-hot foods, fruits you peel yourself, bottled and canned processed drinks, and hot coffee or tea should be safe.

* Talk with your health care provider or your local travel clinic about other advice on travel abroad.

meh... I've never been sick from traveling and I always eat fruits and veggies directly from the market - with the peels. I wash them in tap water, brush my teeth with tap water and have even drank straight tap water here in Mexico. I purposely chose to not be overly anal about my food and exposed myself to the local bacteria a little at a time so I could build up a resistance. Now in some areas of the world I might be a bit more uptight but I think it definitely depends.

Besides, it's not just countries that don't have "high standards of food hygiene" that make people sick. I know plenty of people who got sick when they first started traveling in the US.

Basically, as with all things, if you don't do stupid stuff you'll probably be ok.

mnmn wrote:Question: Should I take special measures with food and water in other countries?
Answer: Yes. Not all countries have high standards of food hygiene. You need to take special care abroad, particularly in developing countries. Follow these rules when in other countries:

* Do not eat uncooked fruits and vegetables unless you can peel them. Avoid salads.

* Eat cooked foods while they are still hot.

* Boil all water before drinking it. Use only ice made from boiled water. Drink only canned or bottled drinks or beverages made with boiled water.

* Steaming-hot foods, fruits you peel yourself, bottled and canned processed drinks, and hot coffee or tea should be safe.

* Talk with your health care provider or your local travel clinic about other advice on travel abroad.

Have broken all those rules & haven't been sick yet

So, I should avoid salads and uncooked fruits and veggies in another country but the people there are fine to eat them?

I think it's all about common sense and just being careful without being paranoid. Obviously freshly cooked things are going to be pretty safe. But if you are in a location with decent food standards I'm sure your uncooked and unpeeled fruit will be fine - although I normally wash my unpeeled fruit here at home in Australia so I'd do it overseas too.

And then some things you just can't control. For example you could go to dinner in a restaurant and Sydney and get food poisoning but eat street food from a road-side stand in Viet Nam and be fine. But would you recommend people don't eat at Sydney restaurants because you can't see the food being cooked? No.

I feel that there is no much need to take that high special measures as mentioned above but obviously one need to take care of the food because the tastes of different people varies in different regions like "few have spicy,few have more salt,few full cooked , few oily....".
So only one needs to chose the food with the range with which he is accustomed with and even the the food habits vary depending upon the peoples immunity levels.
And regarding water it only depends on the cost of water like in few regions pure water is very scarce so the level of purity will be low in order to satisfy the cost factor .
I hope that this post helped you.

The countries I was ill in were India, Nepal and Africa, I certainly wouldn't drink the tap water.