|
Eat
carefully when traveling the world
February 24, 05
Suzanne Havala Hobbs
It’s a big, beautiful world out there. But it’s
hard to enjoy it if you’re doubled over with stomach
cramps.
If you travel overseas, it’s important to keep in mind
guidelines to protect your health. We in the U.S. and Canada
are accustomed to an environment that, while not free of hazards,
protects us from many bacteria, viruses and parasites that
pose a threat once we leave home.
Areas where the risk is highest include developing countries
in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, and even
some popular tourist destinations in the Caribbean and Pacific
Islands.
What’s most likely to get you is travelers’ diarrhea,
or TD. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
20 percent to 50 percent of international travelers end up
with TD every year. Contaminated food and water are the most
common sources of illness. They can pass on E. coli, giardiasis,
Norwalk-like viruses, hepatitis A, and other infectious diseases
and parasites.
Protect your trip and health by being cautious – and
smart – about what you eat and drink in higher-risk
locations or places you suspect are unsanitary. What to do:
* Choose foods that have been freshly cooked and are served
steaming hot, such as hot soups, steamed rice, and cooked
vegetables. Watch food being prepared, if possible, so you
know it’s fresh.
* Stick with fruits that are easy to peel or cut open without
touching the edible parts, such as bananas, papayas, melons,
oranges, lemons and limes. The flesh of mangoes, for instance,
is often handled while the fruit is peeled and can easily
be contaminated.
* Travel with a supply of packaged or canned foods and eat
them if you aren’t sure locally prepared food is safe.
Another option: Prepare meals yourself if you have access
to a kitchen.
* Shop at local bakeries for freshly baked breads, but don’t
buy foods if the bakery cases are filled with flies.
Eating well in high-risk countries can mean avoiding foods
that, under normal circumstances, you would eat because they
were good for you, such as fresh salads (they may have been
washed in unclean water), fruits that can’t be peeled
such as berries and grapes, and fruits that may have been
handled excessively, such as sliced fruit arranged on buffet
lines.
Other riskier choices:
* Fruits and vegetables that have not been washed or may have
been washed in unclean water. Also avoid cut-up fruits and
vegetables set out on ice cubes that may have been made using
unclean water.
* Foods that have been exposed to the open air where flies
have been settling on them.
* Foods left out for an indeterminate length of time on buffets
and cafeteria lines in warm temperatures.
* Artful arrangements of food that were necessarily handled
extensively.
* Meats, poultry or seafood that are not thoroughly cooked
and dairy products made with unpasteurized milk. To be safe,
avoid shellfish completely and eat no meat that has any red
remaining.
* Foods and beverages sold by street vendors, unless beverages
are bottled and opened in your presence.
Where drinks are concerned, it may be necessary to put safety
ahead of nutrition. Soft drinks, beer, and other bottled beverages,
as well as hot tea and coffee are generally safe; fresh juices
are not. Avoid tap water and ice cubes unless you know the
water is safe to drink. Otherwise, water needs to be purified
by boiling or using iodine.
Country-specific food and water safety information is available
online from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
at www.cdc.gov/travel/
and the World Health Organization at www.int/ith/preface.html.
Another excellent resource: Travellers’ Health: How
to Stay Healthy Abroad by Dr. Richard Dawood, a guidebook-sized
paperback reprinted in 2003 by Oxford University Press.
|
