FOOD AND HEALTH STANDARDS

Are people in North America and Europe too safety conscious? We are grateful that health inspectors hold our restaurants to pretty high standards. But are they too high? By what standard can we objectively define "too"? When you visit a developing country you become aware of how widely standards can vary.
Here in Saigon you can spend any amount on restaurant food, from 50 cents to $50 for one meal. We relish the fact that you can observe Vietnamese eating at a roadside stand where there is no curb; at sidewalk cafes (actually tiny stools, no tables and the kitchen is a mobile fast food cart); small open ended restaurants that spill on to the streets; as well as a huge selection of fine Vietnamese and foreign food (Chinese, Indian, European, etc.) restaurants. Of course if you wish, you can have a pizza delivered to your door. And if you run a one person store (thousands do) then you can have an inexpensive meal of vegetables and rice or noodles delivered to your shop.
There are thousands of simple street side cafes. We see dishes being washed in a tub of cold water on the sidewalk; uncooked food that is unacquainted with a refrigerator; cooked foods collecting dust stirred by passing motorbikes and cars. And while they eat at these places regularly, Vietnamese understand when we simply confess that we don't (yet) have Vietnamese stomachs. We have played it safe for these first three months and limited ourselves to restaurants frequented by middle class Vietnamese and expats. We are thankful that so far we've had no digestive problems!
The vast number of these eating places would be closed down in North America for violating health standards; but here they feed tens of thousands every day. And they do this at very little cost. When the majority of wage earners make less than $200 a month, who would dare to close down places where people can fill their hungry stomachs for a dollar or less?