# Is Eating Street Food (in 3rd world) A Bad Idea? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 1, 2015, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-eating-street-food-in-3rd-world-a-bad-idea/719001 "2015-05-01T14:45:38Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![grude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47774/32.png) [@grude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grude)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2015, 6:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-eating-street-food-in-3rd-world-a-bad-idea/719001/21 "2015-05-02T06:31:35Z")
I got sick returning to the USA and eating restaurant food. I think what is commonly referred to as travelers diarrhea is just you being exposed to different ambient bacteria, and you will eventually adapt. Honestly I’ve never worried about eating street food, or drinking local water. Unless you have some specific health issue just carry some anti-diarrhea tablets and go wild. Any place you travel to a street vendor with a reputation for causing food poisoning would quickly go out of business, the locals talk and eat there all the time. ---
**Author:** ![Darryl\_Lict](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7cd45c/32.png) [@Darryl\_Lict](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darryl_Lict)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2015, 8:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-eating-street-food-in-3rd-world-a-bad-idea/719001/22 "2015-05-02T08:05:09Z")
Street food is one of life’s greatest pleasures. I’ve been all over the planet and I’ll try damn near anything. I’m not the cleanest person (understatement of the year) and it would be dangerous to perform surgery in my kitchen, but I guess it makes for a pretty healthy immune system. In all my travels, I don’t ever remember getting food poisoning. I had a pretty sketchy steak from a hut with questionable refrigeration on a remote beach in Baja during the total eclipse of the sun. I remember feeling a bit off, but I didn’t barf or anything, That’s about the worst experience I can remember, which wasn’t bad at all. Getting sick from drinking too much, well that’s another story. ---
**Author:** ![JustinC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justinc/32/8083_2.png) [@JustinC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JustinC)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2015, 9:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-eating-street-food-in-3rd-world-a-bad-idea/719001/23 "2015-05-02T09:01:51Z")
> [@Horatio\_Hellpop](#): > > Foreigners in China are advised to stay away from street food unless a Chinese friend or co-worker can vouch for it. I stick with restaurant food and regularly get sick anyway. Oh wow, the street food in China is fantastic! Even the locals in Wuhan called a 1.5-mile strip of vendors ‘Dirty Alley’ but they’re in competition with one another, you aren’t going to find any dodgy practices there. The food is cooked in front of you, everyone can see how the cook is operating, it’s served red hot and you’ll not see the cook actually touch it with anything apart from steel utensils. I’d get sick sometimes, too, but not from the street food. It was restaurants piling the MSG in to disguise the cheap, inferior ingredients. I’ve never been sick from street food in China, Korea, Sri Lanka, Europe, Hong Kong, or the UK. ---
**Author:** ![coremelt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4491bb/32.png) [@coremelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/coremelt)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2015, 9:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-eating-street-food-in-3rd-world-a-bad-idea/719001/24 "2015-05-02T09:38:35Z")
I eat the street food here in bangkok quite often. Especially the vendors on Sukhimvit Soi 38 are some of the best (and cheapest) Thai food you can get. Eat at popular places where the food goes quickly and is fresh cooked and you’re generally ok. ---
**Author:** ![Novelty\_Bobble](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Novelty\_Bobble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Novelty_Bobble)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2015, 11:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-eating-street-food-in-3rd-world-a-bad-idea/719001/25 "2015-05-02T11:07:44Z")
> [@coremelt](#): > > I eat the street food here in bangkok quite often. Especially the vendors on Sukhimvit Soi 38 are some of the best (and cheapest) Thai food you can get. > > Eat at popular places where the food goes quickly and is fresh cooked and you’re generally ok. Ditto for me. Some of the most delicious treats I’ve had were in the shacks and vendors by the river boat stops. Objectively, probably the riskiest thing I ate was a sea bass and ginger ceviche in that revolving restaurant in Cairo. I was on a business trip and was switched into “first world” mindset and probably wouldn’t have ordered it had I been thinking about it. It was very nice though with (luckily) no after-effects but then I am blessed with a fairly robust digestive system. ---
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2015, 11:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-eating-street-food-in-3rd-world-a-bad-idea/719001/26 "2015-05-02T11:19:55Z")
> [@grude](#): > > Any place you travel to a street vendor with a reputation for causing food poisoning would quickly go out of business, the locals talk and eat there all the time. Never heard of [gutter oil](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gutter_oil), hey? ---
**Author:** ![grude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47774/32.png) [@grude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grude)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2015, 1:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-eating-street-food-in-3rd-world-a-bad-idea/719001/27 "2015-05-02T13:13:06Z")
> [@Monty](#): > > Never heard of [gutter oil](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gutter_oil), hey? Notice the link says even restaurants are using it, it refers to filtered and treated cooking oil and the worst claim is diarrhea. I just can’t imagine being so paranoid, even if you stick to restaurants you can still get gutter oil or food poisoning, unless you have so health issue like immune suppression. There is so much bigger issues to worry about aside from food poisoning. ---
**Author:** ![simple\_homer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9de0a6/32.png) [@simple\_homer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/simple_homer)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2015, 1:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-eating-street-food-in-3rd-world-a-bad-idea/719001/28 "2015-05-02T13:56:12Z")
> [@JustinC](#): > > Oh wow, the street food in China is fantastic! Even the locals in Wuhan called a 1.5-mile strip of vendors ‘Dirty Alley’ but they’re in competition with one another, you aren’t going to find any dodgy practices there. The food is cooked in front of you, everyone can see how the cook is operating, it’s served red hot and you’ll not see the cook actually touch it with anything apart from steel utensils. > > I’d get sick sometimes, too, but not from the street food. It was restaurants piling the MSG in to disguise the cheap, inferior ingredients. I’ve never been sick from street food in China, Korea, Sri Lanka, Europe, Hong Kong, or the UK. The gutter oil used in the street food is probably more likely to make you sick than the MSG. > **[Gutter oil](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gutter_oil)** > > Gutter oil, trench oil, sewer oil and tainted oil (Chinese: 地沟油 / 地溝油; pinyin: dìgōu yóu, or 餿水油; sōushuǐ yóu) are Chinese slang terms primarily used in China and Taiwan to refer to recycled oil. > It can be used to describe the illicit practice of restaurants reusing cooking oil that has already been cooked for longer than safety codes permit. It can also be used to describe the reprocessing of yellow grease collected from sources such as restaurant fryers, kitchen, slaughterhouse waste and sew... Gutter oil (simplified Chinese: 地沟油; traditional Chinese: 餿水油; pinyin: Dìgōu yóu) is a term used in China and Taiwan to describe illicit cooking oil which has been recycled from waste oil collected from sources such as restaurant fryers, sewer drains, grease traps and slaughterhouse waste. Despite Western politicization and news coverage of the issue in the People’s Republic of China, the issue is not limited to these countries, Southeast Asia is also a problematic area in this regard. Reprocessing is often very rudimentary; techniques include filtration, boiling, refining and the removal of adulterants.[1] It is then packaged and resold as a cheaper alternative to normal cooking oil. Another version of gutter oil uses discarded animal parts, animal fat and skins, internal organs, and expired or otherwise low-quality meat which is then cooked in large vats in order to extract the oil. ---
**Author:** ![JustinC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justinc/32/8083_2.png) [@JustinC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JustinC)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2015, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-eating-street-food-in-3rd-world-a-bad-idea/719001/29 "2015-05-02T15:54:57Z")
> [@simple\_homer](#): > > The gutter oil used in the street food is probably more likely to make you sick than the MSG. > > [Gutter oil - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gutter_oil) > > Gutter oil (simplified Chinese: 地沟油; traditional Chinese: 餿水油; pinyin: Dìgōu yóu) is a term used in China and Taiwan to describe illicit cooking oil which has been recycled from waste oil collected from sources such as restaurant fryers, sewer drains, grease traps and slaughterhouse waste. Despite Western politicization and news coverage of the issue in the People’s Republic of China, the issue is not limited to these countries, Southeast Asia is also a problematic area in this regard. Reprocessing is often very rudimentary; techniques include filtration, boiling, refining and the removal of adulterants.[1] It is then packaged and resold as a cheaper alternative to normal cooking oil. Another version of gutter oil uses discarded animal parts, animal fat and skins, internal organs, and expired or otherwise low-quality meat which is then cooked in large vats in order to extract the oil. Eurgh, that sounds awful. But it was only after eating in Chinese restaurants that I had uncomfortable side effects, and not all restaurants. I didn’t have the same reaction to any foods in other countries, before or after living in China, or after eating street food. It was pretty obvious that the Chinese restaurants were throwing large amounts of MSG into the dishes and it took about a month for my body to get used to it. many friends said the same and some couldn’t eat in restaurants that use MSG. After a trip around Vietnam and Cambodia I re-entered China and it then took my body around 2 and 1/2 weeks to get used to it. ---
**Author:** ![Zsofia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/7bcc69/32.png) [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2015, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-eating-street-food-in-3rd-world-a-bad-idea/719001/30 "2015-05-02T16:01:39Z")
When I went to Mexico, my cousin who was living there said she eats the street food, albeit less so in the summer, but didn’t recommend that we do so since we were only there for two weeks and didn’t want our vacation ruined. It’s like anywhere else, you go to the place with the long line of regulars and you judge for yourself how clean it looks. She also suggested being willing to leave a restaurant that didn’t seem clean. We ate all over the place (not street food) but mostly at local places, had incredible food, didn’t get sick. ---
**Author:** ![Hector\_St\_Clare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5ac83/32.png) [@Hector\_St\_Clare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hector_St_Clare)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2015, 3:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-eating-street-food-in-3rd-world-a-bad-idea/719001/31 "2015-05-03T03:32:29Z")
The one street food I stayed away from in Africa (well, I stayed away from others, but the only one I really wanted to eat) was raw oysters. ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2015, 7:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-eating-street-food-in-3rd-world-a-bad-idea/719001/32 "2015-05-03T07:58:17Z")
The worst runs I ever had was after eating at a very upscale resturant in NYC. Take precautions. But remember about half[of all travellers fall sick](http://www.cdc.gov/Ncidod/dbmd/diseaseinfo/travelersdiarrhea_g.htm) despite the precautions. Even if you reduce the amount of non sanitary stuff you consume, your system is still exposed to unfamiliar bacteria. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2015, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-eating-street-food-in-3rd-world-a-bad-idea/719001/33 "2015-05-03T14:39:22Z")
I have had turista twice, once in La France and once on Le France (ocean liner). Meantime, I have been to Barbados more than a dozen times and I eat everything there and buy raw fruit and vegetables from a roadside vendor that happens to have her stand in shouting distance from where I stay. I also drink the water (known to be safe) and yes, have bought from stands (although they are not common there) with no problems. Economically, it is certainly third world, but educationally it is not. I think the cleanliness might exceed that of NYC (where I have also had street food). And, 25 years ago, at least, the best hoagies I found in Philadelphia were from a street vendor that set up shop on a street that ran though Drexel University. ---
**Author:** ![Last\_Glacial\_Maximum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/bc79bd/32.png) [@Last\_Glacial\_Maximum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Last_Glacial_Maximum)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2015, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-eating-street-food-in-3rd-world-a-bad-idea/719001/34 "2015-05-03T20:29:21Z")
Back in the 80’s, when I was a Peace Corps volunteer in coastal Ecuador, I basically lived on a variety of street foods and fresh fruits for two years. Most days I would buy at least one fruit smoothie {usually cantaloupe} and for a few extra cents the lady would throw in a raw egg from a basket she kept sitting on her little table. I knew a Chinese immigrant to Ecuador that made a great seafood ceviche. After a while as a regular customer, I was able to entire the kitchen in his restaurant whenever I wanted. All I can say in describing this kitchen is “the horror, the horror”. Filthy was too nice a word to describe it. The counter tops were covered with dirty pots/pans/woks with untold hundreds/thousands? of cockroaches scurrying around. His food was great and it didn’t deter me one bit {young and dumb}. I would buy fresh tropical fruits every couple of days and never washed them, just rubbed them on my shirt before eating. I didn’t do must cooking in my house because I could buy prepared food for just a few cents more than if I bought the ingredients myself. So why bother… I never was laid low by stomach problems. Malaria yes :eek:, stomach issues no. 😉 I am still a frequent visitor to Ecuador, but I am MUCH MORE CAREFUL these days because I realize I’m not invincible anymore. . ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2015, 9:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-eating-street-food-in-3rd-world-a-bad-idea/719001/35 "2015-05-04T09:50:00Z")
> [@Darryl\_Lict](#): > > …Getting sick from drinking too much, well that’s another story. that might be why you haven’t gotten sick from street food. I know a couple of cases where a group of tourists all ate the same thing, but only the ones who abstained fromalcohol (or drank lightly) got sick. As for me, most of my traveling has been in first world countries, and I eat street food. The only time I got tourist tummy was in Japan, of all places. But it wasn’t very serious. It just gave me the opportunity to check out a wide variety of public toilets. I discovered that I like squat toilets. ---
**Author:** ![Balthisar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/balthisar/32/2825_2.png) [@Balthisar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balthisar)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2015, 3:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-eating-street-food-in-3rd-world-a-bad-idea/719001/36 "2015-05-05T03:19:13Z")
First off, I’ve been vaccinated multiple times against Hepatitis A and B, and I’ve been very lucky in my street food adventures in Mexico (primarily) but also in China and Thailand. Know first that until you’re adapted to the local parasites, eating and/or drinking water in a new area may make you sick – whether or not it’s street food, and whether or not it’s clean. The key is to pick popular places that lots of locals go to. Street vendors get reputations, and if the place is popular, you can be pretty sure that they won’t make anyone sick. Also have a look while you’re in line. Are they handling money and food without putting on gloves or washing/sanitizing their hands? Are they using the same utensils to handle both raw and cooked food? This last point really bothered me a few months ago visiting a popular tourist street in Yangshuo, China. It was a street food stand affiliated with a German pub next door, and the cook was a western dude presumably well educated. He was using the same tongs to move both raw pork to the grill and cooked pork to people’s sandwiches. Pay attention! Some places are harder to judge, because it’s hard to tell who the locals are, and chances are good that _all_ of the customers are tourists (I have in mind Beach Road in Pattaya, Thailand. As much as I long for a street-sold doner kebab, I’ve never actually had one.). Oddly in Mexico that only place I’ve had problems were in bona fide restaurants, and all three times it’s been salsa asada in different restaurants, to the best of my ability to establish a correlation. ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2015, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-eating-street-food-in-3rd-world-a-bad-idea/719001/37 "2015-05-05T16:34:45Z")
> [@Siam\_Sam](#): > > I rarely eat street food in Bangkok anymore. That phase is long gone. I want air con, and preferably Western, as Thai food is what we eat at home, and Western is special. > > It’s true that street food gets a lot of contaminants in a polluted city like Bangkok. But I still have a vivid memory of spotting a street-stall cook duck under the Skytrain stairs at 1am to take a humongous piss on the sidewalk. No place to wash one’s hands on the sidewalk, I’ll clue ya. > > Ice is almost always okay here. Plentiful and cheap. if it’s in little cubes, then it came from a factory. Chipped ice is to be avoided, as that’s usually been chipped off with a rusty icepick and kept in unsanitary conditions, but I can’t recall the last time I saw that. Is it true that the canals in Bangkok are almost open sewers? I saw a film where a British lady went for a boat ride (and did not wear a face mask)-she wound up getting sick. ---
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2015, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-eating-street-food-in-3rd-world-a-bad-idea/719001/38 "2015-05-05T17:04:08Z")
I lived in Cairo, Bamako and Kampala and scrupulously avoided eating street food unless it was something like roasted chestnuts right off the grill. I never had a problem with gastric distress, while others were vomiting all around me. Otherwise, you’re pretty much playing Russian roulette with a fully loaded gun. I traveled extensively when I lived in Europe and had no problems with the carts, although I avoided the ones in the then Soviet Bloc countries. FWIW: I remember a street food expose that was done in Washington, DC in the 90s. Many of the carts had no refrigeration and were storing meats in either Styrofoam coolers or without any protection at all. When the reporter pointed this out to one hot dog stand owner, he promptly apologized and threw all of his dogs into his outside trash can. The reporter moved down the block, and the camera man ducked behind a car and filmed the dog stand owner retrieving the dogs from the can. ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2015, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-eating-street-food-in-3rd-world-a-bad-idea/719001/39 "2015-05-05T17:16:39Z")
> [@Hector\_St\_Clare](#): > > The one street food I stayed away from in Africa (well, I stayed away from others, but the only one I really wanted to eat) was raw oysters. You were wise to pass-one bad oyster can kill you (if contaminated). I saw a similar thing in Brazil-at a popular beach resort, guys came by with fresh oysters-on ice. they would shuck them in front of you, and serve them from their trays. they looked and smelled fresh, but I was warned not to try them. ---
**Author:** ![Ale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f19dbf/32.png) [@Ale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ale)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2015, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-eating-street-food-in-3rd-world-a-bad-idea/719001/40 "2015-05-06T15:46:06Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > Is it true that the canals in Bangkok are almost open sewers? I saw a film where a British lady went for a boat ride (and did not wear a face mask)-she wound up getting sick. Yes, it’s true, the open sewer thing. Specially the smaller ones. I, for one, used to dinner on street food in Bangkok frequently, specially a fantastic Pad Thai from a stall that every now and then had a rat scurrying around… but as some have mentioned the important thing is that you see how the food is prepared and that is good. Having said that I made a point of never, ever, eating chicken; under good conditions it’s easily contaminated; under, shall we say, _less_ good conditions it’s a crap shoot. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-eating-street-food-in-3rd-world-a-bad-idea/719001.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-eating-street-food-in-3rd-world-a-bad-idea/719001.md?page=3)