Posted by Brian on Monday, 1. March 1999 at 10:24 Bali Time:
In Reply to: Taking Red Cordial to Bali ?? posted by Bren on Sunday, 28. February 1999 at 16:02 Bali Time:
I'm a food technologist specialising in food safety, and worked for a cordial manufacturer in my earlier days, and wouldn't recommend any cordial as a prophylactic against food poisoning. There is nothing special unique to raspberry cordial. Just raspberry flavour and red colour. Both present in tiny amounts.
Cordial does contain a preservative, (sulphur dioxide, sorbate or benzoate) and I suppose that if you add some to water the cordial, given a few minutes to act, it MAY reduce the bacterial load. But it wouldn't be effective against virus' or parasites. Far better to drink boiled or bottled water.
As for lining the stomach with cordial before hand. No way this could work.
I'm also not aware of any evidence that drinking cordial could help once you start to feel squeamish. The preservative is only effective against bacteria and, if you are feeling crook, they would be present in the millions of millions in the gut. The preservative is not strong enough to be effective in this situation - even if you were to take it neat. Pity though. It could replace antiobiotics otherwise in a lot of situations.