Healthy Diet?

Today was a fairly uninteresting day from a story-telling standpoint so I figured I would address a common question I've gotten from a lot of people about the safety of the things I eat & drink here. Tales of "Montezuma's Revenge" have been circling long before my first trip south of the border & it seems like many people have heard stories of someone who went to México & got terribly ill. So I'm going to go over the 3 prevailing rumors to address the fears & my actual experiences.

1. You can't drink the water.
This is the one that I think has the most credibility although it's been greatly exaggerated. While I rarely drink tap water here, I always brush my teeth with it (including rinsing) & I have drank tap water at a couple of hotels that claim to have specific water filtration systems for their sinks. I have drinks with ice in them on a regular basis, plus I've had more than my share of café de olla from street vendors which must be brewed with tap water. Just today, I had several small glasses of a drink called "agua jamaica" which is essentially a cold-brewed hibiscus tea in a restaurant that had to have used tap water as the drinks were free as part of a 3-course lunch for 45 pesos, or roughly $4. I can not recall a single time I got sick from any of these "risks" so I would say that with some common sense the water is not to be feared.

2. You shouldn't eat fresh produce.
Total crap based on the fallacy that Mexicans don't wash their produce. Most places scrub their produce thoroughly so you have little or no risk at all. I've eaten a phenomenal variety of fruits & vegetables in a similar variety of settings & I've never had a problem. Not only have I been safe, but the flavors in the produce here can boggle the mind of a New Yorker. For example, when in Oaxaca with my friends Tim & Susan, Susan purchased sliced cucumber with lime juice & hot sauce from a street vendor. She told us we had to taste it & after inhaling hers we were so impressed we needed to buy a second round. The cucumbers were SO cucumber-y that we couldn't stop with one serving. This is a common reaction I have to the produce here.

3. You should avoid food from street carts.
You know my answer to this one. Besides, if you've ever eaten a hot dog from a cart in NYC you've taken a far greater risk in my opinion. I eat from street carts often & I've done it everywhere in this country I've visited, & I have to recommend that any food lover do the same. Especially if the cart has a lot of business which ensures not only rapid turnover of ingredients but also flavors delicious enough to inspire fans when there is a ton of competition. I've long said the standardized laws for food cleanliness in the US are overly broad & often nonsensical so I have no fear eating meat that has been stored at ambient temperature for hours, or anything cooked using methods that are open to the elements. If pork cooked to medium on a spit on the street is wrong, I ain't never gonna be right.

All this said, I did eat green sausage from a roadside shack so maybe I've built up a tolerance to these kinds of things. In which case you'd be wise to eat only at hotel restaurants & to drink only bottled water from Europe. ¡Besos!