3 ms·

Nah. I'm perfectly content to eat in my friend's uninspected home, or judge random street vendors by sight and/or yelp. I suggest you travel more broadly. I'm

Nah. I'm perfectly content to eat in my friend's uninspected home, or judge random street vendors by sight and/or yelp. I suggest you travel more broadly. I'm guessing you've never been to a part of the world with a vibrant street vendor scene, because once you have, you weep over the sad sterile* world we've legislated here in the US. * Excepting the mass salmonella poisonings we get from large-scale mechanized food preparation.

mywittyname 8y ago
Africa and SE Asia have a massive problem with food-borne illnesses and deaths related to it. You can take a look at the WHO's numbers, as they track food-related illness around the world [1]. Results start on page 61 and are broken down by region. They report impact of food-related illness in terms of years of life lost. America, Canada, W. Europe, and Australia are in the range of ~10 years lost per 100k people to food related illness. Africa is around 1200 per 100k and SE Asia is at 800 per 100k. http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/199350/9789241565165_eng.pdf?sequence=1 http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/199350/97892... So maybe America is a "sad, sterile" world, but it's also legislated away something that remains a major problem in plaguing the rest of the world.
- stickfigure 8y ago
  Maybe I'm misreading this, but page 78 seems to be the money shot and it's 35 for the US, 40-50 depending on what part of Europe you're in, and 140 for Mexico - which I consider to be the gold standard for street food. There's also a huge problem inferring that health inspections and street vendor licensing have anything to do with the results. Mexico is probably no different from Thailand in this regard, and yet there's a 10X difference in years lost. I'll bet there are stronger correlative factors of climate (tropical = more parasites and diseases) and quality of public drinking water. Rich northern countries score better than equatorial countries on these benchmarks too. It's quite a stretch to say that folks are going to start dying left and right if the health board takes a day off. I'd be perfectly happy to live with the health inspection regime (and the rich food culture) of Mexico, especially if it's combined with our public water and sanitation system.

mywittyname 8y ago

Africa and SE Asia have a massive problem with food-borne illnesses and deaths related to it. You can take a look at the WHO's numbers, as they track food-related illness around the world [1]. Results start on page 61 and are broken down by region. They report impact of food-related illness in terms of years of life lost. America, Canada, W. Europe, and Australia are in the range of ~10 years lost per 100k people to food related illness. Africa is around 1200 per 100k and SE Asia is at 800 per 100k. http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/199350/9789241565165_eng.pdf?sequence=1 http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/199350/97892... So maybe America is a "sad, sterile" world, but it's also legislated away something that remains a major problem in plaguing the rest of the world.

stickfigure 8y ago
Maybe I'm misreading this, but page 78 seems to be the money shot and it's 35 for the US, 40-50 depending on what part of Europe you're in, and 140 for Mexico - which I consider to be the gold standard for street food. There's also a huge problem inferring that health inspections and street vendor licensing have anything to do with the results. Mexico is probably no different from Thailand in this regard, and yet there's a 10X difference in years lost. I'll bet there are stronger correlative factors of climate (tropical = more parasites and diseases) and quality of public drinking water. Rich northern countries score better than equatorial countries on these benchmarks too. It's quite a stretch to say that folks are going to start dying left and right if the health board takes a day off. I'd be perfectly happy to live with the health inspection regime (and the rich food culture) of Mexico, especially if it's combined with our public water and sanitation system.