A survey at 100 restaurants in HCM City has revealed that up to 70 percent of them serve customers with parasite-infected raw vegetables, announced the HCM City-based Pham Ngoc Thach Medical University.

‘Wild’ vegetables turn gourmet specials

Tran Thi Hong, chairwoman of the university’s Parasitology-Microfungus Faculty, who chaired the survey, said that they collected raw vegetable samples from 50 restaurants and 50 street restaurants by chance. These samples were taken from cuisines like hu tieu (noodle), bun bo (noodles and beef), pho, bun rieu (noodle in crab chowder), bun mam, my quang, etc.

Up to 72 percent of samples had parasite. The percentage of infected samples at street restaurants is 2.4 times higher than in-house restaurants. Hong said parasite on raw vegetable includes various kinds of worms and larva.

At the same time, the HCM City Public Health Institute announced the testing results of vegetable grown in Hiep Binh Chanh ward, Thu Duc district, HCM City, which shows that vegetable is all infected with Coliforms and E.coli bacteria.

Hong recommended restaurants to wash raw vegetable by ozone water and under water tap before soak vegetable in bittern.

PV