Eat and Drink Safely Whilst Travelling Abroad

Eating and drinking abroad whilst travelling may cause you to suffer with diarrhoea or some other kind of stomach upset.  On a more serious note, cholera, typhoid fever and hepatitis A can also be contracted by drinking water and eating food which is contaminated.

However, there are precautions you can take to ensure you enjoy the best of health when travelling in foreign countries and some of these are detailed below.

• As you would as home, always make sure you wash your hands after using the toilet or before preparing food to eat.
• Only eat food you know to be fresh and make sure it is cooked all the way through and delivered to you piping hot. Warmed up food and tasty morsels exposed to flies should be avoided at all costs.
• Avoid using mobile street traders to buy foodstuffs such as ice-cream and with milk and dairy products like cheese and butter, make sure they have been kept in a refrigerator prior to you purchasing the goods.
• As far as fresh fruit and vegetables are concerned, unless you can peel them yourself, leave them alone. 
• Eating undercooked or even raw seafood is not a good way to ensure you remain healthy for the duration of your stay abroad.  Similarly, drinking alcohol to excess is also not going to be good for you. 
• Use bottled water if you have any concerns about the quality of the tap water, making sure bottle seals are not broken prior to your use. If you have to use tap water its best to boil it or filter it with a water purifier.
• Unless you can be sure that it is made from chlorinated or otherwise treated water, you should really give ice a miss.

Restrictions on Foodstuffs You Bring Back to the UK

Even if it is for your own personal use, it is against the last to bring meat or milk based products from outside of the EU back to the UK with you. There are also limits on bringing back other food items, including eggs, fish, honey, poultry, shellfish and certain kinds of fruit and vegetables and these rules stand whether you are taking the items back yourself or someone else is posting them to you from abroad.

It’s worth remembering that breaking these rules and bringing illegal stuff back to the UK will not only result in long queues with the Immigration staff.  Your prohibited items may be seized and you may well be prosecuted as well so think long and hard before you do it.