STREETFOOD VENDING NOT REALLY HEALTHY

by Wilhelmina S. Orozco

The Filipino people are fond of: tusok-tusok fishballs, quail eggs, balut or penoy, kikiam, chicken balls. They buy this everywhere, whether inside malls or on the streets. This is the problem: the street is not really a safe place for eating. You get the flies, the soot from the jeepneys, the motorcyles, the tricycles, and all other vehicles, including the coughing and sneezing of the next customer to you. And they do that while in front of the food. Others dip their food in vinegar but the stick has already been lined by their saliva.

No rules and regulations exist to control, to supervise, or even to make foods by the sidewalks safe for our people. I know this for a fact. Twice I ate food by the sidewalks and the next week, I was down with a cold and a slight fever. I can only attribute it to the lowered resistance I got from eating there.

Who are responsible for regulating streetfood vending, the barangay or the city health centers. Whoever they are, the people need their muscles to control the race for profits of the vendors and to insure that the people stay healthy despite their poverty -- of resorting to eating by the sidewalks.

So here go the suggestions:
1. Require all vendors to cover the food they sell with an acrylic plastic.
2. Roasting by the roadside should be banned.
3. Washing of dishes by the streets should be banned. Instead, plates should be used.
4. Dining tables should be allowed only on streets where vehicles are not allowed to pass.
5. Vinegar in open bottles should not be allowed. Instead, they should be capped and the customer has to just pour it on the food.
6. Food handlers should wear plastic gloves.  They should not be used for handling moneys.
7. Soot coming from barbecue stands should not bother homes around. I have seen those stands where they roaster just keeps doing his activity without regard to where the soot would fly, whether to the open windows, the indoors of homes, or waft over the faces of passersby.
8. Food should be fresh. I have also seen kikiam, fishballs, etc. being sold at UP stands without any ice to keep them fresh. I wonder if they can withstand the heat of the whole day and still remain delicious.
9. Overpricing of foods should not be allowed. At Maria Orosa street corner Padre Faura, a turon vendor sells two pieces for P20 whereas along Pedro Gil, it is only P15. I think that the DTI should monitor the prices of such foodstands so as to prevent business opportunist that wreak havoc on the financial capabilities of our kababayan.

More to come.