Roadside eateries: Dishing out disease

Bengaluru may have streets lined with upmarket restaurants, but it is also home to roadside eateries providing cheap and affordable food to a large section of its people. The tasty delicacies are, however, known to spread disease in the absence of any checks on their quality with the BBMP doing little to keep them in line, report Chandrashekar G. and Abilash Mariswamy.

If you are a foodie and a traveller, there is a lot on offer to satisfy your appetite on television with shows revolving around food and exotic locations becoming hugely popular in recent years.  While this has only spurred the love for both gourmet and street food in India, unfortunately those enjoying the latter may be satisfying their palate at the cost of their health. People, who frequent the roadside stalls or trucks, often don’t stop to think about the quality of the food they are consuming or the hygiene involved in its preparation.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations, over 2.5 billion people, especially women and children eat street food every day around the world and the result is food-borne infections like gastroenteritis, enteric fever and typhoid.

But this doesn’t stop many from enjoying it, especially if they happen to be from the lower middle class as this is usually the only kind of food they can afford to eat out. Bengaluru is no different. With new petite food outlets coming up on various streets and food trucks and stalls offering mouthwatering delicacies at numerous fests, people naturally flock to them, unmindful of the diseases they may be exposing themselves to.  

 Most of the street food is kept in the open to entice customers with its sight and smell, but in the process it is contaminated by emissions from passing vehicles and flies. Worse, the vendors are not known to wash their hands frequently or even if they do, the water they use often isn’t clean. Sometimes all they use is a hand towel, which is used to clean just about everything around,  including the utensils.

Says Dr. Deepanju D Changkakoti, consultant,  internal medicine, at Fortis Hospital, “Roadside food sold by street vendors is definitely unhygienic because of the kind of water they use to prepare it. Most of the time they do not even wash their hands before preparing or serving the food.”

 Dr. Sunil Havannavar, consultant, internal medicine, Columbia Asia Hospital, Sarjapur Road too warns that street food can be a major source of illnesses as a result of the poor hygienic practices of the vendors and the sanitary conditions of their  vending points. “Acute gastroenteritis including cholera, colitis, typhoid, and hepatitis are common illnesses caused by street food consumption,”  he observes.

 “Many of these illnesses are preventable. Use of protective clothing and  covering the head while cooking, washing hands, medical screening of vendors and their water source and quality monitoring could prevent food-borne diseases,” say doctors.

BBMP must have flying squads auditing  food samples for quality and hygiene

If Bengaluru has street vendors selling unhygienic food, what is the BBMP doing about it, asks civic expert and secretary of the Citizens’ Action Forum (CAF), N Mukund.

Pointing out that it is the civic agency, which issues the trade licences,  he says the onus is on it to regulate roadside eateries and ensure that they maintain minimum hygiene to prevent their customers from falling sick.  “ The BBMP must have flying squads to take samples of the food being sold and send them to the laboratory to check for quality and hygiene,”  he suggests.

While the civic activist agrees that the food sold on the roadside is  cheaper than that which is served in darshinis or hotels, he regrets that it is unfortunately not as hygienic. “These eateries serve a large number of people who toil through the day and so it is the duty of the BBMP to check how the food is cooked. Sometimes the food is served right on a major storm water drain, which makes people who consume it vulnerable to disease,” he observes.

Mr Mukund regrets that the BBMP does not have a count of such eateries and its plan to issue them trade licences has still not been fully enforced. “First, the BBMP must make an inventory of these eateries and regulate them, checking their kitchen, water  and hygiene,” he underlines.

BBMP chief health officer, Dr. Manoranjan Hegde, however, claims  that health inspectors of the wards do check the street vendors for visual hygiene and cleanliness. “It is the food safety wing of the health department which is authorised to take the food samples for testing,” he adds