Food Safety in Mexico: 8 Tips to Avoid Getting Sick

Travelling in Mexico with young kids made us think about things we might not have worried quite as much about on our own. Food safety in Mexico was one of our biggest concerns, especially when it came to drinking water, brushing teeth, washing produce and figuring out what was safe for our kids to eat. I knew Dan and I could be careful, but when we rented a condo in Playa del Carmen for a month with our 2- and 4-year-old kids, we wondered how realistic it would be to keep them from swallowing tap water in the bath or eating something that might make them sick.

Thankfully, with some extra precautions and probably a little luck, we made it through those four weeks without any food or water-related illnesses. Since then, we’ve returned to Mexico with our kids many times, travelling to Mexico City, Valle de Bravo, Oaxaca, La Paz, Cabo San Lucas and San José del Cabo. Along the way, we’ve become much more comfortable with everyday questions like whether you can drink the water in Mexico, how to wash fruits and vegetables, what to do with tap water when washing dishes and how cautious you really need to be when eating at restaurants.

You don’t need to spend your entire Mexico vacation worrying about every sip of water or bite of food. A few simple habits can greatly reduce the risk and quickly become second nature. Based on our many trips to Mexico with kids, these are the eight practical food and water safety tips we follow when travelling in Mexico with our family.

Disclaimer
We have travelled extensively in countries where tourists need to take precautions with food and water. We have plenty of practical experience, but neither of us is a health professional. This post shares the Mexico food-safety practices we followed based on our own experience and research. It should not be considered professional health advice.

Please consult a travel health professional for your own situation.

This post contains compensated links.

Mexico Water Safety Tips

1. Can You Drink the Water in Mexico?

The Mexico food safety tip, “Drink purified water” seems obvious, but it’s super important. In Mexico purified water is called ‘agua purificada’ (or sometimes ‘agua pura’).

Many resorts Mexico provide purified or bottled drinking water, but confirm the water situation with your accommodation before your trip.

If you are staying at a Mexican vacation rental, you may need to buy your own purified water. Thankfully, this is easy as convenience stores are everywhere, especially in tourist areas.

OXXO is the biggest chain of Mexican convenience stores, but you can also buy purified water at the MEGA Soriana supermarket chain or even at Walmart stores. We recommend that each family member bring their own refillable water bottle to Mexico. Then you can buy larger bottles or jugs of purified water to refill them.

An especially easy way to get purified water in Mexico is to have it delivered. During our stay, the condo staff at our Playa del Carmen apartment rental delivered 5-gallon jugs of purified drinking water for a small fee, and one usually lasted our family of four about three days.

2. Can You Drink Coffee in Mexico?

You may also be wondering about drinking coffee in Mexico. We love our coffee, so going without it for a month wasn’t an option.

We drink a lot of coffee, so rather than rapidly draining our purified water supply, we decided to boil enough Mexican tap water each night that we could use in our coffee the next morning.

When boiling water in Mexico, it is essential to boil the water vigorously for at least a full minute, but we often went way longer. Boiling water is a very effective way to disinfect drinking water in Mexico. Once the boiled Mexican tap water cooled, we poured it in the coffee maker.

Note, if you are in a high-altitude destination, like Mexico City with kids, you should increase the boiling time to three minutes.

3. Taking a Bath in Mexico

As parents of two small children, we wondered if it was safe to take a bath in Mexico? We viewed bath time as one of the biggest risks for getting untreated Mexican water in our kids mouths.

Young children may not understand that the tap water isn’t safe to swallow and that they need to keep their mouths closed throughout bath time. This significantly increases their risk of getting sick in Mexico.

We reduced the risk by limiting how often our kids had a full bath in Mexico. Our Playa del Carmen condo had a chlorinated swimming pool, and since they were swimming every day anyway, their daily swim did a pretty good job of keeping them clean. It should be noted that swallowing pool water is also highly discouraged.

We still gave them proper baths when they needed one, but fewer baths meant fewer opportunities for our young kids to accidentally swallow the tap water. When we did give them a proper bath in Mexico, we kept the water in the bathtub very shallow and kept the duration of their baths very short.

4. Can You Wash Dishes With Tap Water in Mexico?

Our Playa del Carmen condo didn’t have a dishwasher, so we had to wash our dishes in the sink. Did we use purified water to wash our dishes in Mexico?

Nope, we used very hot tap water to wash our dishes in Mexico. We used tons of dish soap and made sure every single item was thoroughly dried before use.

5. Can You Brush Your Teeth With Tap Water in Mexico?

This one is pretty simple: use purified water to brush your teeth and to rinse your toothbrush afterwards. Never use the tap water in Mexico to brush your teeth (unless it has been properly boiled or treated first). To make this easier, we always kept a bottle of purified water by the bathroom sink.

We didn’t use one on our trip, but if you want an extra layer of water safety in Mexico, consider buying a travel water purifier.

Mexico Food Safety Tips

6. Buying Food at a Mexican Grocery Store

Staying at a vacation rental, we self-catered a lot during our month in Playa del Carmen. We shopped for groceries at the Playa del Carmen Walmart a few times, but mostly we went to MEGA Soriana for a more local experience. We had no concerns about buying food for our family at either supermarket.

7. How to Wash Fruit and Vegetables in Mexico

A common rule of thumb for travellers is: ‘If you can’t peel it yourself, you shouldn’t eat it“.

If you stick to this food safety rule for travellers, you will get tired of eating bananas and papayas in a hurry! To expand your selection of fruits and vegetables in Mexico, do what the locals do and buy some food disinfectant.

Food disinfectant is available for sale in the produce section of the Mexican supermarkets.

Take your produce home, add the specified amount of disinfectant to the water, and soak the produce for the recommended amount of time. It worked like a charm for us!

8. Mexican Restaurant Food Safety

When travelling, we try very hard not to eat at restaurants in the center of the tourist districts, as restaurant prices can be higher and we’ve often found the food less impressive. We’ve had better luck finding good food at lower prices a few blocks away from the main tourist areas.

These Mexican restaurants are focused on serving food to tourists, so they are used to our food safety and water quality standards. It makes sense, if they give enough people travellers diarrhea, they will get horrible reviews on Google or Yelp, effectively putting themselves out of business.

In Playa del Carmen, the main tourist area is Fifth Avenue (Quinta Avenida). We ate at a ton of family-friendly restaurants in Playa del Carmen, none of which were on Fifth Avenue. The restaurant food was excellent, and we didn’t get sick once. 

We stayed away from Mexican street food though. As amazing as Mexican street food looks and smells, the risk of food poisoning is much higher and we simply didn’t want to risk it with small kids. 

We hope these Mexico food and water safety tips help you have a fun and healthy trip!

Planning a Family Trip to the Riviera Maya

If you are currently in the Riviera Maya or are planning a trip there, check out our post on the Best Things to do in the Riviera Maya with Kids. It’s full of planning tips, exciting family activities and links to all of our Mayan Riviera blog posts. It’s sure to help make your family trip a memorable one!

Found this post helpful? Pin It For Later!