BajaNomad - disinfecting fruits and veggies

disinfecting fruits and veggies

westcoasterboater - 3-16-2013 at 09:30 AM

Going to La Paz for the first time in April, what should we wash our fruits and veggies with? A friend elsewhere in Mexico used an iodine solution on all fuits and veggies. Thanks in advance.

DENNIS - 3-16-2013 at 09:49 AM

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Originally posted by westcoasterboater
Going to La Paz for the first time in April, what should we wash our fruits and veggies with? A friend elsewhere in Mexico used an iodine solution on all fuits and veggies. Thanks in advance.

They selll whatever it is in the stores in a small bottle. Probably is iodine.
I use water.

gnukid - 3-16-2013 at 09:52 AM

You can wash and soak items in water and iodine disinfectant that they sell in most stores. We don't worry extensively about it and have not had trouble but we also buy higher quality organics from local farms or hand pick fruits an veggies oursleves from gardens and reduce risk of commercial contamination through fertilization, pesticie, handling and travel.

I would worry most about salads in a restaurant vs home made salad that you made with clean hands on a clean counter. Most illness issues are associated with auto-contamination by those involved in the process.

nbacc - 3-16-2013 at 10:42 AM

No cold slaw!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

rhintransit - 3-16-2013 at 10:55 AM

15 years ago when I first started living in Mexico I faithfully washed and soaked everything in Microdyn (iodine drops widely available). gave that up after a few years and have had zero problems. occasional tourista in restaurants or such, but at home, zip.
by the way, much of the produce, at least in central Baja, comes from the USA or is "seconds" from crops grown for export to the USA. I don't know about La Paz though I've lived there off and on and never did anything special to fruits/veggies.

mtgoat666 - 3-16-2013 at 11:07 AM

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I worry more about pesticides and herbicides, so I rinse fruit and veg with hot water, a more effective solvent than cold water,... Modern farming methods coat produce in chemicals, none of which is good for you.

desertcpl - 3-16-2013 at 11:17 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by rhintransit
15 years ago when I first started living in Mexico I faithfully washed and soaked everything in Microdyn (iodine drops widely available). gave that up after a few years and have had zero problems. occasional tourista in restaurants or such, but at home, zip.
by the way, much of the produce, at least in central Baja, comes from the USA or is "seconds" from crops grown for export to the USA. I don't know about La Paz though I've lived there off and on and never did anything special to fruits/veggies.

Microdyn,, that is about the standard to use,, and you have built up resistance over the years so you are good to go, but for a newbie, it would be a good idea to use Microdyn. we also carry with us Lomatil.. first sign of your stomach going south take one of these,, every Pharmacia Carry's these

Skipjack Joe - 3-16-2013 at 11:33 AM

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Peel the fruits and cook the vegetables and you're pretty safe.

In restaurants watch out for the salsa that's provided for the chips. Cooked items are fine, though: soups, pizza, quesadillas, etc.

As stated, moctezumas revenge is way down in baja compared to say 20 years ago.

DavidE - 3-16-2013 at 01:18 PM

YODO is iodine in español.

And yodo is (not exaggerating) about a thousand times more effective then the better tasting Microdyne. Many stomach issues are caused by virus which are incredibly delicate (until they get inside you). But YODO would kill e-coli that microdyne could not kill. Same for single cell plant and animal life forms.

Food poisoning is another topic altogether and is unaffected by chemical treatment. It is incredibly potent bacteria waste product poison - not alive. Shrimp is a real hazard for food poisoning, after being cooked and then stored incorrectly.

Many years ago YODO was the only disinfectant available. I learned quickly that rinsing veggies in a diluted vinegar solution or even limón helps to rid the bitter aftertaste. We used a bucket and soaked veggies for 15 minutes, totally immersed. I believe many of the problems were caused by farmers using fresh manure in truck gardens (e-coli).

I also keep well-in-mind that an overwhelming percentage of fruits and veggies found in Safeway, Ralph's, etc. comes from Mexico.

windgrrl - 3-16-2013 at 04:51 PM

The fruit and vegetables were especially wonderful the past two months. There are thriving organic produce farms and vendors in BCS and much of the produce I bought this year originated in La Paz. Check out the grocery stores and try something you've never had before! If you can travel, try the Saturday community markets in Los Barriles or San Jose del Cabo, you can find everything from radicchio to romanesco as some growers cater specialty crops to the Cabo chefs. Use the usual precautions. I rinse and scrub well, and pour the rinse water over outside plants...a salad spinner is great if you can find one (e.g. Walmart in La Paz). We connect a new basic water filter to our drinking water supply each year.

We have an annual check up with a travel health consultant beforehand re: current situation and vaccinations. Ours recommended cholera vaccination and Dukoral this year. For years, we have bought produce and eaten in many places along the way down Mex. 1 to the end of the peninsula without any problems.

I miss my Mexican fruit and veggies...they're triple the cost up here in Canada for withered representations.

bajalinda - 3-17-2013 at 11:43 AM

There is also a farmers market kind of thing going on in La Paz on Tuesdays and Saturdays. You should be able to get good produce there as well as other things like bread and arts & crafts.

paranewbi - 3-17-2013 at 03:17 PM

40 years and over 200,00 miles in Mex and Central America eating anything and everything (and I mean things that shouldn't be eaten by anyone!) never been sick, neither has the wife. Figure we have a cast iron stomach.

Had a travel buddy in the 70's pretty much the same until he drank out of a gas station hose in Tijuana (1973) and was a sorry dude for 3 days!

Last week ate Pickled pigs snout from a street cart in Tlaquepaque layered with shredded lettuce and 'sauce' on a dry tortilla bed. Little chewy, sliced in quarter inch full snout (nostril holes showing) nice and pink with a little darker pinkness in the nostril area, uncooked, just pickled. Wasn't something I would order again but the ladies at the stand loved seeing a gringo try what the local crowd was savoring...wife could hardly watch.

Zapotec - 3-17-2013 at 03:23 PM

When we started going to Baja, and to this day, we just buy our produce from Calimax, and wash it with tap water, and we have never had a problem.

DavidE - 3-18-2013 at 05:37 PM

Some folks are lucky. I am not. Remember, mango orchards get sprayed twice per crop with a fungicide and it is not a great chemical to ingest. My mangoes in Michoacán cannot pass north of Irapuato without being hot water washed for infestations. The hot water also removes almost all of the fungicide. I believe the west coast hot water wash is near Culiacan. So perhaps the mangoes sold here are defungicized. I would wash them with warm water and dish soap anyway.

Without fungicide treatment I would lose 70 80% of my crop. Then, how could Jumex come in at the end of the season and buy 20kg crates of mangoes and pay 30 pesos per?

vandenberg - 3-19-2013 at 04:05 PM

I've seen some white fungus on my neighbor's mango tree, both limbs and fruit. Didn't seem to affect the taste any.

DavidE - 3-19-2013 at 04:45 PM

Some areas do not have a lot of problems, and the peninsula is more isolated than the huge areas of coastal Mexico. The trees are sprayed when the fruit has bedded out (marble size) and then again at the 70% stage. There are dozens of different diseases for the mango. Fungicide is a generic term that controls most of the pests. A lot of fungus degradation is cosmetic, the clientes do not desire mottled black fruit even though the organism has not penetrated deeply (yet).

Iguanas are a real pest. Their payback is they are part of the Mexican food chain.

Mangoes vary hugely in vitamin C content. Unfortunately my crop (Haden) ranks rather low. But Haden powers Jumex mango products. Two favorites are Manila regional de Jarocho (Veracruz) and the Ataulfo. A plate of sliced mango smothered in salsa Balentina is hard to beat. Sometimes Eduardo (Chacón) a fellow manguero and I spend a day in his 600 tree orchard and have mangoes for lunch. I also miss my miel de abeja de mango. Eduardo told me the giant clover planting has changed the flavor but the bees went nuts over the new pollen source. Had to buy another dozen boxes.

[Edited on 3-19-2013 by DavidE]

Jack Swords - 3-21-2013 at 06:46 AM

Hola Larry... Here's info on CCD and the use worldwide of systemics...you can't wash THIS off.

The recent AP article on the grave shortage of honeybees for almond pollination, was misleading. Colony collapse “disorder” (CCD) has conclusively been shown to be a result of the most popular pesticide class on the market, namely neoniconinoids. This chemical is known by over 200 different names: imidacloprid is one of the most common: any “systemic” pesticide is deadly to bees. Many growers in this valley use it routinely. Homeowners can buy it in any hardware or garden store, as a Bayer “All-in-One” product. There is no more excuse to pretend that application of this chemical is harmless, as the manufacturer insists.
The research is readily available: a recent study at Harvard re-created CCD in several honeybee hives simply by giving them small doses of imidacloprid.” The lead author of the Harvard report, Chensheng (Alex) Lu has made it clear that:" There is no question that neonicotinoids put a huge stress on the survival of honey bees in the environment. The evidence is clear that imidacloprid is likely the culprit for Colony Collapse Disorder via a very unique mechanism that has not been reported until our study."

According to Lu even, small amounts like 20 ppb of the chemical was enough to lead to full blown CCD within 6 months.

Also, two studies that came out in Science showed a close link between neonicotinoid pesticides, of which imidacloprid is one. According to an article in Mongabay:
Past research has shown that neonicotinoid pesticides, which target insects’ central nervous system, do not instantly kill bees. However, to test the effect of even small amounts of these pesticides on western honeybees (Apis mellifera), Harvard researchers treated 16 hives with different levels of imidacloprid, leaving four hives untreated. After 12 weeks, the bees in all twenty hives—treated and untreated—were alive, though those treated with the highest does of imidacloprid appeared weaker. But by 23 weeks everything had changed: 15 out of the 16 hives (94 percent) treated with imidacloprid underwent classic Colony Collapse Disorder: hives were largely empty with only a few young bees surviving. The adults had simply vanished. The hives that received the highest doses of imidacloprid collapsed first. Meanwhile the five untreated hives were healthy.

Just before the Harvard study was released, two studies from the UK and France also linked neonicotinoid pesticides to CCD.

Policy changes are clearly in order. Arguments of excessive cost will only have meaning until our food supply is threatened: it is, right now.And it is only the beginning.

Then, I wonder how the "systemic" poison can NOT be in the fruit we eat.