Delhi belly and Montezuma’s revenge are bad enough when you’re on vacation. But if you’re an expat living in a developing country, concern about food safety becomes a daily worry. If you get sick, you might miss work and important meetings. And you’re not going “back home” in a week or two, where the food is generally safer — you’re staying, and might get sick again. Plus, when you’re on vacation, you’re often more prepared: When you go travel in a poorer country, you take your medicines with you. Live there, and you get more lackadaisical, or the medicine runs out. Or you lose it somewhere in your apartment.
As an expat, you need to be on guard all the time. But it’s impossible to know if your food is safe, and even “common sense” is not much help. The worst food poisoning of my life came after eating at a 5-star hotel, and I’ve often found that I get sick after eating at “nice” hotels. On the other hand, I eat street food in China all the time. I love the chuanr, the middle-eastern style lamb skewers sold during the summer time, the baozi (steamed buns with meat), the liangpi (a cold noodle dish similar to phad thai), and the mala tang (a spicy/numbing soup with vegetables and meat that you have chosen yourself).
And I never get sick from the street food. Not much, at least.
My secret for digestive health is probiotics. I hear they’re all the rage in the US now, but I’ve been taking them for years. My brand of choice is the Whole Foods 360 brand, which provides a massive dose, is economical, and comes in 250-count bottles. I bring a few bottles back to China every time I return from the US. What I’ve discovered is that if I run out, I will start having lots of digestive problems after a few weeks.
If you’re overseas and have digestive problems, I highly recommend you get some Acidophilus pills. At the very least, yogurt should help: Just be sure to buy a brand with live cultures. You should start feeling more “solid” inside and have to worry a lot less about what you eat. As someone who gets intestinal problems fairly easily, I can tell you that it’s a big relief.
Photo credit: Average Jane
