[Leica] Indian food illness

[lrzeitlin at gmail.com (Lawrence Zeitlin)]

*Jayranard's comments about the relative risk of eating from Indian street
vendors is right on target. I was a professor at the Univ. of Delhi from
1986 through 1988. My very health conscious wife and my young daughter were
with me. She ate properly, cooked all our food, stayed away from everything
suspicious - and became deathly ill from bacillary dysentery. On the other
hand, I ate lunch every day from a street vendor who shoveled me a heaping
spoon full of steaming dal dotted with unrecognizable well cooked morsels of
something or other on a banana leaf. I washed it down with a bottle of Campa
Cola or mango soda and ate a banana (which I peeled myself) for dessert. I
had no intestinal problems for two years other than an occasional belch. My
older daughter and son in law were US State Dept. employees in Bangladesh at
the time and told us horrific tales of widespread food poisoning. The
largest hospital in Bangladesh was the Diarreheal Institute. Enough said.*

**

*Jayanard's view about having antibodies to all Asian diseases is oft
debated by my Indian colleagues in the US. Many had joint appointments
teaching alternate years in India and the USA. They claimed that after a
year in the US, they suffered the same ailments on returning to India as a
typical tourist. One even proposed making "Pollution Pills," small capsules
of Indian noxious agents that they could consume daily during their stay in
the US so as not to lose their immunity. Sounds like a a good business idea
to me.*

**

*Larry Z*