Is food trucks and street food safe during pregnancy?

What does the evidence say about food trucks and street food during pregnancy?

1. An assessment of food trucks found 94.73 percent had at least one critical risk factor for foodborne illness, with 77.3 percent failing to keep perishable food out of room temperature beyond the 30-minute maximum. 1
2. In a direct observation of 10 mobile vendors, seven stored previously cooked meat at unsafe temperatures and four contaminated served food with raw meat or poultry during the observation window. 2
3. Two thirds of those vendors touched served food with bare hands, and not one washed hands or changed gloves across a 20-minute observation. 2
4. Commercial food settings carried 61 percent of US foodborne outbreaks from 2009 to 2015 compared with 12 percent for private homes, so buying prepared food shifts more of the control out of your hands. 3
5. Food heated above 74°C (165.2°F) internally kills most bacteria, which is why a cooked-to-order item straight off the grill is in a different risk category from anything held in a tray. 4

Is food trucks and street food safe in each trimester?

• First trimester. A hot, plain, freshly griddled item is often exactly what a queasy first trimester wants, and that also happens to be the safest thing a truck sells. Watch the order go on the grill. If it comes out of a warming tray instead, that is the version to skip.
• Second trimester. Festivals and markets are at their peak and so are the queues. A long line is a good sign, because it means high turnover and food that has not been holding. What you want to avoid is the truck with an empty line and a full warming tray.
• Third trimester. Bathroom access and standing time become the practical limits well before food safety does. If you do stop, pick the truck with a visible handwashing setup and staff who change gloves between handling cash and handling food, since bare-hand contact was the most common failure in the vendor studies.