Who wouldn鈥檛 want to eat a fresh lemon while hiking the trails in Cinque Terre, Italy? Or a jackfruit growing in the courtyard of a wat in Thailand?
Unfortunately, the skin of fresh fruits and veggies are breeding grounds for microbes鈥攕ome of which can cause disease. If you鈥檙e traveling where water quality is questionable, simply washing the skin鈥檚 surface isn鈥檛 a ready solution.
鈥淐ook it, boil it, peel it, or forget it,鈥 says Nanci Baldwin, an R.N. with Passport Health, which manages health clinics specializing in travel.聽
Cooking or boiling veggies will kill off any hitchhiking bacteria, but steaming strawberries is an unlikely option. Instead, look for fruits, such as oranges and bananas, with a heavy peel that can be removed without touching the fruit.
Peeling a thin-skinned fruit may result in cross-contamination caused by the knife鈥檚 edge touching both the skin and flesh. Baldwin recommends re-rinsing the fruit with bottled water after peeling, but says even that is still risky.聽
Some travelers mix bleach washes for their produce, but this tends to make your fruit taste like your bathroom sink. Instead, try a wash from companies such as 听补苍诲 .
If that freshly picked lemon or jackfruit is too tempting, and Montezuma is wielding his revenge, Balwin recommends two steps: Pop an over-the-counter drug, such as Immodium, to stop diarrhea. But that won鈥檛 be enough for travelers with bellies full of bacteria. Get a prescription for a country-specific antibiotic and begin taking it at the first sign of digestive trouble.
鈥淵ou don鈥檛 want your sickness to be the most memorable part of your trip,” Baldwin says. “You want to have a memorable trip for all the right reasons.”