Travel Tips
Foods you should never eat overseas
One of the most enjoyable parts of travel experiences is to sample different foods from around the world. But while your palate may be game, your stomach may not always be up to the challenge. To avoid spending half your trip running to the bathroom, it's important to find a middle ground between sampling local cuisines and staying healthy and safe.
When travelling overseas, it’s wise to avoid tap water and unpasteurised dairy for starters to help avoid traveller’s diarrhoea such as the dreaded Delhi or Bali Belly. And generally, it’s safer to go vegetarian (beans, rice, potatoes etc) because meat is a favourite environment for nasty bacteria to thrive in particularly when it’s undercooked.
But there are a number of other potentially dodgy delights you might not have thought of when it comes to eating to keep healthy abroad. Here are some common foods you should skip when travelling.
Fruit – The old traveller food safety adage, "boil it, cook it, peel it, or forget it” applies directly to fruit. A simple safe approach is to avoid fruits that don't come with a built-in thick peel. The good news is that fruits with a thick peel are protected from tainted water and soil, and are considered safe to eat just about everywhere. Bananas, mangoes, pineapple, and papayas are among the delicious fruit protected by their own tough peels. For maximum safety, peel the fruit yourself.
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Salad – You may find yourself craving a crisp salad but think twice before going for the greens – The World Health Organization advises against green-leafed vegetables, since they can contain dangerous microorganisms that won't necessarily wash off with water. And in places where the water is of questionable quality, washing can actually compound the problem.
Fish and shellfish – The bad news is that while fish and shellfish may be delicious, they can also be the source of some pretty bad ailments. For instance, anisakiasis is a raw-fish-based invasion of worms in the digestive system. Shellfish poisoning, meanwhile, can have paralytic, neurotoxic, or amnestic symptoms. Other types of seafood poisoning can cause vomiting, diarrhoea, and other pretty unpleasant effects.
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Buffet foodsand leftovers – Buffets present a lot of logistical food-safety challenges. Keeping foods from spoiling requires constant attention, but buffet food sits unattended for hours. People can cough or sneeze on the food, as well as touch it with their unwashed hands and flies easily land on food exposed to the air. Maintaining food at the correct temperature is also a key issue. Hot foods need to stay piping hot, and cold foods must remain refrigerator-cold to ward off bacteria growth. So it's better to steer clear of buffets anywhere you're not 100 percent confident of food handling and safety techniques.
Raw eggs – These can be dodgy too. Skip runny eggs, novelty cocktails, homemade mayonnaise, and other products that rely on raw or undercooked eggs. They can be a common cause of nasty stomach bugs.
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