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Food Safety


camerashy

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Considering the often deplorable lack of food hygiene in Thailand, I am often amazed that I don't come down with food poisoning more often than I do. In my town outside Bangkok, you can visit a local food market where meat is sold from old wooden benches, with flies everywhere, dispersed infrequently by the seller with the aid of stick and a few pieces of attached cloth. Dogs and other animals wander through freely. Cleaning is done infrequently, if at all. Health department officials in my country would have heart failure and close the place immediately. In fact, it is becoming more and more difficult to buy even fruit and vegetables in some countries now without them being shrink wrapped and protected from customers hands. The supermarkets claim this is to protect them from lawsuits brought about by customers getting sick after eating food purchased from them. Because the growers name and address has to be on the pack, or he can be traceable in some other way, the lawsuit can be directed toward them. This is far from the case in Thailand - food handling and storage is often, to our eyes, unsanitory. Yet in more than 20 trips to this country, mostly eating from street stalls or small local restaurants, I have only ever had 2 cases of food poisoning, and both were after eating farang food from 'western' style restaurants. I won't mention the names of these places in public, but the latest case involved a well known and classy place just off Sukhumvit. I was over the toilet for hours, and it completely ruined a whole evening.

Have I just been lucky so far with the street stalls, or is this 'par for the course' with other people?

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Par for the course IME. I have had food poisioning making me violently and deathly ill twice in my life. Both times were at Big Boy chain restaraunts in the USA. Not saying I have not gotten mild cases of the shits here in Asia, but they were just that, mild. And I do not pay any mind where or what I eat...

 

Personally, I think that all the anti-bacteria cleansers and excessive hygiene in the West makes people weak immune-system wise and increases the resistance of bad bacteria to things that can kill it. It cannot be a good thing.

 

Cheers,

SD

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there is a food section for that topic, no?

Same here, and I suspect all the LT visitors and residents on the board don't have too many horror stories that would put a black eye on the condition of food and cooking in thailand.

 

I got sick one time in 10 or more years, and that's because i did not listen to the GF who told me she did not think the gai yang sauce looked fresh enough. I find the thais have quit a bit of wisdom when it comes to food edibility and preparation.

 

Compared to India and nepal, just to stay in Asia, Thailand is like a squeaky clean kitchen. It would never occur to me to eat on the street in these countries, in Thailand, i do it all the time.

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Par for the course. Got really sick from food 3 or 4 times in Thailand (in more than 5 years). This includes one time that I got sick after eating at a well known German restaurant, and one time that I got sick from seafood bought at Carrefour.

 

One reason why people don't get sick more often from dirty food in Thailand is that they tend to use more chemicals here than in the West, not less. Food ingredients like antibiotics, preservatives, you name it (eg formalin for seafood at foodstalls in Bangkok). Many of the everyday cleansers you can buy in a Thai supermarket are illegal in my homecountry.

 

The main reason, however, is that fresh (and freshly cooked) food rarely makes you sick. It is mostly food that has been prepared in advance which is problematic. So traditional Asian food is relatively safe even without lots of chemicals, whereas mechanized food-processing in the West cannot be done without them.

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I have never had any major problems with food in all my trips to Thailand and in fact have never been sick.

 

Usually the first few meals that i have sort of run thru me but after that no problems.

 

I cannot say the same thing for India and Nepal.

 

Horrendous experiences in these places.

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Guest lazyphil

I was **VIOLENTLY** ill in what could be said as a wholesome and clean place as Vancouver, I ate a meal in the hotel the night before flying home and felt a bit dicky at the airport, on taking off I was sick every 15 minutes for the duration, I lost about a stone in weight and took several weeks to feel normal, it was vely horrible!! i've eaten in the filthiest looking places in SEA and touch wood have never had more that the runs due to too much Chillie!.....now shall I recount my toliet proximity issues I had at the Jungle lodge in Puerto Maldonado Province in darkest Peru?? :o

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I think Hepatitis-A is perhaps the biggest threat; but, easy enough to obtain vaccination(s) before coming over.

 

My gut seems to be quite sensitive to bacteria. Maybe 4-5 times a year I'll get the squirts ... easily dispelled by a regimine of ciprofloxacin (500mg, 2/day for 5-6 days). The good thing is that generic cipro is very cheap here ... especially at a Lotus pharmacy.

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Funny that this subject came up at this time. I just got over a three day bout of diarrhea.

 

That is my third time now in six years; the others were in laos and chiang mai..

 

I had a good conversation with my internists at BH. he told me they see a high number of foreigners especially with the rainy season with dysenteria, diarrhea, and other gastro-intestinal problems.

 

For those who think thailand is an outlier or some safe heaven, one might wish to seek out factual data rathter than one's personal experiences to draw conclusions..

 

Ony epidemiologists, infection control specialists and DHS or Thailand's equivalent would be able to give you any meaningful patterns or trends..

 

But my guess is thailand would be in that average range for a developing country with all the problems associated with lack of regulatory enforcement internally and externally, actual sound regulations, tropical weather issues, env-related problems, etc

 

Thailand still has many issues with lack of proper refrigeration, contaminated water and its support system/sources, hand-washing techiques and enforcement, etc

 

It is a catch 22 for industrialized countries that do mprove their community's health, safey and environment end up putting their citizens at risk when they leave their "home" environment as their immune systems just don't build up or lose their resistence to fight unrecognized bugs or bugs that would have been in their gene-pool history...

 

CB

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Guest lazyphil

I remember reading in a newspaper a while back the H&S brigade tested the free bar peanuts we have here, they found something like 15 different urine samples on them, YUMMO ::

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