Multi-purpose ice cream
With the heat of recent times, people are trying to cool down. Not least because of the cooled drinks. When an order is often asked whether ice cream should be included.
Ice cream is a product that has been used since King Rama IV and has been indispensable ever since. But what about hygiene? Mahidol University is engaged in this.
Ice is like water, if it is contaminated, consumption can make you sick. Because at the high temperatures of the tropics, bacteria thrive and people get sick. Microbes survive in ice and can later cause problems in humans, such as intestinal disorders. For example, in May 2005 in Lampang and Chiang Rai more than 1000 people were affected by a Hepatitis A virus because contaminated water was used in a local ice factory.
Not only the spring water and the production line must be pure, but the employees must also observe hygiene when crushing and packaging the blocks of ice. Oversight is overseen by the Department of Health, the FDA. The water used is checked twice a year, both in the dry season and in the rainy season. In general, the ice cream produced in the factories is good.
However, during transport, the customers' vehicles must also be hygienic, but that is sometimes lacking. Supervision is insufficient. As well as the place where it will be stored for sale. It is important to buy the plastic bags with ice undamaged and sealed. The ice blocks must not be placed in the same refrigerator compartment with fish, meat and fruit. This must be done absolutely separately.
It is therefore important not to have ice cubes added to the drink everywhere along the way.
Source: der Farang May 2015
For as long as I have been in Thailand I have been using ice cream that is officially meant for refrigeration and not for consumption.
The ice cream for consumption is in closed plastic bags.
I've never gotten sick of it in all those years.
If you want to worry, you better worry about the food.
Fresh from the market.
And if you've seen the flies there that walk on the food, and the toilet where the food vendors go, you know what that verse means.
That plastic glove that is used nowadays and is pulled on and off all day won't have much positive influence on the quality of the food either.
I have seen that ice cream being delivered to the various stalls in the market, etc. The block was thrown from the pick-up, or motorcycle with trailer, on the ground and dragged with hooks to the relevant stall, through the sand and sometimes mud . The stall owner would then wipe it clean and chop it up for consumption. When I still lived in BKK. Near where I live now is an ice cream factory and there the pick-ups load the ice into the back of the truck. There is also a shop here that distributes the ice. This is done by a woman with a motorcycle with a sidecar in which the block of ice, covered with a cloth, lies and she then brings it to her customers. The water used is ordinary tap water and is not or hardly filtered. There was 1 opposite me who also made and sold ice cream, used a water filter and it had never been cleaned or replaced in the 5 years that he did this. Have another nice drink from one of those street stalls, good for cholera. I had to go to the Paolo Hospital Bangkok for that in the 70s because I was literally rolling on the floor with stomach cramps. Never buy drinks on the street again.
You can only warn, of course, so that the user can pay extra attention to it.
Certainly valuable for travelers who are not used to using ice and then suddenly start doing so daily and abundantly in Thailand. The climate also invites you to do this, of course.
But also remember that even hygienically perfect ice can also have an effect on the intestines. It will quickly be attributed to bad ice cream, but it is simply a change in your eating and drinking behavior.
Usually the end user only has control over what he can visually observe, such as the way the servers handle the ice cream, or how the ice cream is delivered or stored locally.
Buy your own ice cream, a closed bag gives you a better guarantee than that it is delivered in an open bag. Of course, one does not exclude the other.
The consumer has virtually no insight into the production process, transport, etc., but that is of course the case with several products.
So many things can go wrong before it reaches the end user and the consumer is then unaware of it.
Moreover, and that is a personal opinion, I also think that many diseases are attributed to bad ice cream, but that the cause lies elsewhere.
Example – perfect ice in a dirty glass will be attributed to bad ice and not the dirty glass.
(Usually both will go together. With a dirty glass you can also have reservations about the ice and you better walk a little further.)
Personally I have to say that in Thailand I weirdly or rarely get sick from booze and food and hopefully it stays that way. (I'm not talking about too much of either, especially the former 😉 )
I eat a lot from and at roadside stalls. The few times that I was seriously ill in those more than 20 years, I cannot say with certainty whether it was indeed the fault of the ice cream, or whether the food or the hygienic conditions of the business or cutlery were the cause. used to be. All options are possible as far as I'm concerned.
Articles like this are always helpful in my opinion.
If only to inform or warn, even if there is little you can actually do about it.
They belong on the blog, just like a travel story, Baht/Euro discussions, taxi experiences, visa issues, etc...
That's all correct. I also have reservations about the kitchen. On the home front, dishes are washed with detergent and hot water. I have never seen it in Thailand, here people rinse the remains under the tap with cold water and that's it, people know how to dry but they don't do it.
All in all, in the years that I have been here, I have only once felt bad for a night. Of what???
Everything correct.
Tip eat where local people from the area eat. They don't want to get sick either. The throughput of the food is therefore greater.
Oh and drying off isn't as hygienic as you think. Have you ever taken a closer look at a tea towel? Travel groups nowadays flutter the plates dry as a hygiene factor.
Enjoy your meal
Rienie
“It is therefore important not to have ice cubes added to the drink everywhere along the way.”
Well, what should you do with such advice? Have an investigation into the origin and treatment of the ice carried out everywhere first? And then wait for the bacteriological report before you order?
I have never seen anyone chop the ice blocks (for cooling) into pieces until they fit in a glass. Every morning in Pattaya, trucks with bags of ice cubes drive around to provide the various establishments with the daily fresh supply.
If anything is wrong with that, an epidemic diarrheal festival could inevitably be added to the list of events with some regularity.
How Ruud manages to always use ice that is not intended for consumption but for cooling is a mystery to me, and the point of it escapes me completely.
For 'ice creams' you can pretty much eliminate all risks by buying packaged factory made ice creams at any 7-Eleven or Family Mart. A Banana Split with whipped cream in a restaurant with a low turnover may be an unnecessary and easily avoidable risk, but personally I am sometimes tempted. No big deal so far.
Just add that your packaged ice cream can also check whether it has already been defrosted. If you unpack a magnum, for example, you can clearly see whether it is still good. I once had one somewhere at a temple stall that didn't look healthy. Just returned and got my money back.
A power failure in this heat can be fatal for the ice creams
Coming from Europe and having also spent holidays there, it is clear that everyone reacts differently to types of bacteria. Spain used to be known as a country where it was better to take medication against diarrhea in advance, for example. It was all terrible what could happen there, mentally there were those who got sick on the way..
We have raised the hygiene bar ever higher and the resistance has accordingly become lower and lower. We are no longer used to anything and have little to very little resilience when it comes to "strange" bacteria. An entire industry is behind the antibacterial wipes and ointments and waters and cleansers and we are told that we absolutely cannot do without them. In America that is very bad, I think they create 'sterile' people there. They get sick just looking at an ice cube that might consist of different water than one is used to. Using your common sense (also within Europe), but also not walking around the world too paranoia is my motto.
Well in 16 years in Thailand I have never been sick from ice cream or food and I live in a Thai village so take exactly what the people here also take, it also depends on your constitution I think. The same with food, the kitchens in the Netherlands are Not all spotlessly clean either
I actually never put ice cubes in my drinks. First of all because of the warnings about all the scary germs that the internet is full of. Will run quite loose with me because I can handle diseases quite well because I used to bake a lot of cakes in the sandbox. But the main reason is more because I just find it too cold in my body that it is already busy enough to keep the temperature in order. With the fruit / ice cube mixes I even experience pain in my head. It's just too cold for me. I sometimes thought that because of a lot of ice-cold drinks I had more trouble getting and maintaining my body temperature quickly. I barely sweat when I'm less into ice-cold drinks. But that is more something that our weblog doctor can give a good answer to. I feel free to drink something from the fridge, but I don't want it all that cold. I like to drink a nice cup of tea or weak coffee when I'm in a warm country. In addition to the ice cubes, lettuce washed in not so clean water is often in the suspect box of the traveler in foreign countries.
Completely agree with you. We are not ice users either. Drinking what is normally chilled is more than enough for us. Just came over from the USA.
Often difficult to find out what causes the racing poop. Common in Thailand. But the natives too! I think it's a myth that people gradually build up resistance. Have ever spent an entire day vomiting profusely in an emergency room with the most horrific stomach and intestinal cramps. The Thai doctor: Don't worry. That happens to all of us here in Thailand. Much to my amusement, last year almost every member of my in-laws had spray poop! Only I escaped it. Usually the other way around.