Icono Clast wrote:
>
> Me, too. I'm a great advocate of street food. It's delicious,
> healthful, and usually healthier than fancy restaurant food. During
> nine weeks in South America, for example, I got three doses of food
> poisoning: Each one was after eating in a first-class joint. The
> street food never bothered me.
Sorry, but your logic--that it was the restaurant food that made you
sick--is faulty. Food poisoning can occur as long as 36 hours after
ingesting the food; we tend to blame the last meal we ate because that's
what comes back up. In that 36 hours, how much street food did you eat,
compared to a single restaurant meal? The odds are pretty good that it
was the street food that did it.
> Someone in a rec.travel forum responded, in paraphrase, "Of course!
> The street food has high turnover. Fancy restaurants had to wait for
> your arrival."
Fancy restaurants usually have access to purified water with which to
wash and prepare food, and refrigeration with which to store it while
they "wait for your arrival." Street vendors have neither, and the oil
can be rancid--overused to save money--the food exposed to dirty hands,
utensils, and flies, and the food not thoroughly cooked or heated
through for lack of enough fuel.
Eat wherever and whatever you like; food on the street is mighty tasty,
but it's not necessarily "healthier."
Maggie
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