Guildlines on eating salads, salad dressings, and prepared fruit.

I will be coming back to Lakeside in March. The previous 2 visits, I ate at many restaurants, and lots of street vendors. I stayed
away from salad, salad dressings, mayonnaise, and prepared fruits. Do to some of my research, I have read these foods are more susceptible to contact with tap water, or refrigeration issues.

Can I get some recommendations from you locals, if I am being to cautious, and if so, what restaurants would you recommend
for salads, and dressings.

I will be visiting Ajijic, San Antonio, and Chapala.

Thanks in advance.

20+ years ago I would have agreed but now a days I don't give it a thought. I have only contracted salmonella twice in the 6 years I have been eating at the restaurants around here and it wasn't from salad or fruit. That being said I was with family at a sushi restaurant in Manzanillo last week and my son's girlfriend got sick after eating yet we all shared the same items so go figure.........

Yeah. I eat salads all over around here and I haven't had food poisoning in years. Eat at decent places and use common sense. Eat at places that have been round for some time.

CB: Sounds like she didn't get it from the food but rather from money or some other source of bacterial contamination. They say more men travelers get bacterial infections than women travelers and the reason is they tend to handle the money.

I've eaten salads in a thousand restaurants and have never been sick because of that.  I wouldn't give it a second thought unless you have a very sensitive stomach prone to that sort of thing. Restaurants that cause that sort of problem wouldn't stay in business long but there always the isolated cases of something slipping through the cracks.

We were in Texas and my husband got violently ill after eating the same items 3 of us ate. Then I bought this special Argentine shrimp from HEB and he got sick again, and that was in the dish the first time. You never know and he never gets sick here in MX.

I haven't worried about fruits or vegetables for years. Pretty much everyone washes produce these days. Last time I got sick was in Zacatacas back in the 90s. I do prefer food vendors with running water to wash hands. Refrigeration is a plus.

Wash hands thoroughly and often. Repeat

Eat everything, everywhere: Build up your immune system the natural way.....Survival of the fittest really works. The fastidious die off early. Been eating all over the world for 80 years now. I feel weaker.

I carry germicide in my purse and wipes for after I have been on the bus and distribute them to my family. I know this sounds a little obsessive, but it keeps us from getting sick.

I eat salads at a place that specializes in that. I am pretty sure they have good hygiene methods because they are very busy and if clients started getting sick everyone would find out about it and their business would suffer.

Trailrunner wrote:Yeah. I eat salads all over around here and I haven't had food poisoning in years. Eat at decent places and use common sense. Eat at places that have been round for some time.

Spoke too soon.

We have lived here for five years now and eat salads/fruit/etc at lots of places around the lake. We don't even think about getting sick.
We took Dukoral before we moved. It provides a "bridge" so your system can get used to the differences in water/food/bacteria.  My 86 yo MIL takes it before every visit with us.  
None of us have ever been sick.
https://www.dukoralcanada.com/taking-dukoral.html

I took that before moving here too along with Hep A/B vaccinations.

This E. Coli is serious business. If it gets in your stomach, you know you have it. If it gets your bladder, and you are reasonably healthy, you might not know you have it until it hits your kidneys or start seeing blood in your urine. The bladder E. Coli is extremely difficult to get rid of. There is a new antibiotic which is somewhat effective, but the best way to administer it is in a hospital setting with a drip for up to two weeks. To find if you have it, it requires (again expensive) a lab culture and blood test, checking kidney functions. Interestingly, Seguro Popular pays for the drug if you are in a hospital which accepts their insurance, but if you choose daily injections from an outside source, they do not.

I don't know how to prevent it, with globalization of our food supplies, and big, mechanised agriculture it is a difficult road. Raise your own garden is the easy answer, but we all know how much hard, back breaking work that is. Maybe we have to adjust our eating habits to local circumstances, for example, maybe Canadians shouldn't expect to see romaine lettuce in January.

https://www.wsls.com/health/7-more-cases-reported-in-deadly-e-coli-outbreak

Turns out Salmonella can be quite devastating too. During the conquest, it reduced the population from 20 million, to about 2 million.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/01/salmonella-cocoliztli-mexico/550310/