Microbiological quality of street sold fruits in San José, Costa Rica

The sanitary quality of street sold fruits was analyzed during the period from march 1990 thru march 1993 in San Jose, Costa Rica. It looked for the presence of Salmonella spp. Shigella spp., Escherichia coli as well as fecal coliforms in natural refreshments, fruit salads and the fruits most frecuently expended on streets, either in slices as the pineapple (Ananas comosus), papaya (Carica papaya), non-ripe mangoe (Mangifera indica) and watermelon (Citrullus vulgaris) and those that can be eaten without peeling, like nances (Byrsonima crassifolia) and jocotes (Spondias purpurea). 25 samples of each fruit, 50 natural refreshments and 50 fruit salads were processed according to rinse solution method, and the bacteriological determination was based in the methodology described by Vanderzant & Splittstoesser and the Bacteriological Analytical Manual. In the same way, it was used the Most Probable Number for 5 tubes described in the Standar Methods of Water and Wastewater in orden to analyze 15 samples of ready to use water by the fruit hawker. The nutritional value was studied according to the food composition tables for Costa Rica, Latin America and USA. The results show that more than 30% of fruit samples, 70% of natural refreshments and 96% of fruit salad presented fecal coliforms. Same time, all of them present important contamination indexes with E. coli. Salmonella spp. and Shigella spp. were not isolated. The water analysis revelead that 53% contained fecal coliforms, probably due to the lack of hygiene in the utensils used to collect water. The nutritional evaluation shows that fruit portions (except watermelon) satisfy more than 100% of the diary recommendation of vitamin C (60 mg) and 4-7% of the recommended ingestion of dietetic fiber (30g).