That's Right, Dr. Doom, I'm Eating the Strawberries

I had to buy the strawberries. For one, I have a crippling strawberry addiction. I've heard the average American eats eight pounds of berries a year; I, on the other hand, eat eight pounds of berries a month. Of course, I also bring up the average American's consumption of sweet potatoes (5.2 pounds per year) and watermelon (15.1 pounds per year), but that's another story. In short, I'm a fruit beast.

These strawberries were impossible to pass up. It's January. I hadn't seen perfectly ripe strawberries in months. And these looked perfect. Neatly arranged in their little pint box. Calling to me, like plump, red mini-demons.

As a student of global health, I get that there are about a billion ways that ingesting things can bring about misery and death. I don't have an invincibility complex. I totally get that drinking a glass of water can lead to a whole bunch of nasty creatures throwing a fiesta in your liver. But no person, in any profession, can even come close to the extraordinary pessimism of those prophets of doom we call travel doctors.

Every time I leave an appointment with a travel doctor, I'm pretty certain that I'm going to die wherever my travel destination happens to be. Don't even look at animals, they all have rabies. Don't even think about eating salad, or you'll spend your whole vacation in the bathroom. And the water? Forget it. You might as well drink a gallon of bleach and have done with it. There's also my personal favorite: "It's up to you if you want to take the risk of getting Japanese encephalitis." Sometimes they have a point. It is an absolutely horrible idea to drink the water in India. And non-peelable produce can be hazardous. But here's my problem. Have you ever noticed that travel doctors give you the same advice wherever you're going?

Panama City is a very developed place. I admit, I had no idea what to expect when I came here. I was given the same "peel the fruit" and "buy bottled water" advice I got when I went to India. I threw that out the window when my coworkers started recommending that I eat salad and, of all things, sushi while I'm here. I won't be talking about the details of my work on this blog, but sufficed to say, I work at a place that would probably suffer some reputation damage if they advised people to eat poisonous food.

It turns out the travel doctors got one thing right, though by sheer chance. As it happens, you can't drink the water in Panama City right now, because out of season rains have overwhelmed the treatment facilities. By all accounts, this is the first time in decades that it's been unsafe to drink the water. Decades. Consequently, the few shelves in the supermarket dedicated to bottled water are bare. I had to resort to buying seltzer. Seltzer and unpeelable produce.

That's right, Dr. Doom, I'm eating the strawberries.