Dirty food could ruin your holiday

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| 17yrs ago | 3 min read

By Dr Monda Ang’awa

As you travel for the holidays, you need to be extra vigilant in what you put in your mouth. As a traveller, you are especially prone to stomach complaints because you will find yourself eating food you are not accustomed to.

Contaminated food or drink, badly washed fruits and vegetables or poorly stored food can harbour organisms that cause food poisoning. Therefore, be careful about what and where you eat to avoid making the toilet a frequent port of call during your holiday.

Dehydration

Food poisoning, or traveller’s diarrhoea, has ruined many a holiday. Most infections are caused by the Escherichia coli bacteria but other unpleasant bugs like the food poisoning- and typhoid-causing salmonella, shigella, which causes bacterial dysentery, amoebae, giardia and the Hepatitis A virus or Rota virus can also cause severe infections with very profuse diarrhoea and vomiting, making the body lose fluids fast. This is particularly dangerous in children because it can quickly lead to dehydration and if not corrected, can be fatal.

The most common route of infection is faeces contaminating food or drink and then being ingested. For example, that fresh looking green salad you heaped on your plate may have been made from vegetables grown using human manure and the vegetables not washed properly before the salad was prepared. Or maybe the cook did not wash his hands after visiting the toilet, but proceeded to prepare that juicy nyama choma that you hungrily ate without washing your hands. Soon after ingesting this contaminated food, you get a sudden attack of cramping abdominal pain, loose mucoid stool and nausea or vomiting with a fever and occasionally blood in the stool depending on the severity of the infection. This may last a few days or go up to a week. It is simple to treat but by then your holiday is ruined. A good many of these infections can be avoided by taking some simple precautions:

• Always wash your hands with soap and clean water before using them to put anything in your mouth. Air dry your hands or use a clean paper towel.

• Always carry a bottle of soapy water or special antiseptic wipes or gels when travelling.

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• The local drinking water is an obvious source of infection in many places so use only bottled water for cleaning teeth, drinking, making ice cubes for drinks and washing vegetables and fruits.

• 'Cook it, boil it, peel it or leave it' is a basic rule you should always follow. Eat only fresh foods that have been directly and sufficiently heated or cooked.

• Flies spread more infection than all other insects put together so any place swarming with them should be avoided.

• Get vaccinated against Hepatitis A before you travel because the infection is transmitted through contaminated food or drinks.

Containing diarrhoea

If you do come down with traveller’s diarrhoea, there are a few things you can do to help you recover:

• Drink at least three or four litres of fluid a day and more in case you have a fever. Apple juice, soup, vegetable stock or defizzed sodas like coke are better than plain water.

• Don’t drink too much fluid at once because this can trigger vomiting.

• Use commercially made oral rehydration salts to replace the lost salts that the profuse vomiting and diarrhoea flush out. You can make a simple substitute with fruit juice with a pinch of salt and half a teaspoon of honey added.

• Keep the antacids for heartburn only because they neutralise the stomach acids, weakening your defences and allowing the bacteria to multiply faster.

• Do not take anti diarrhoeal medicine because the diarrhoea is your body’s way of flushing out the infection.

• Avoid dairy products, coffee and alcohol but eat boiled rice, fruit, toast and biscuits.