A question about getting sick after a quick lunch turned into a reminder that “just spend more” is not practical advice for millions of people in Mexico.
I recently made a Facebook post asking whether anyone in Mexico had become sick after eating at Subway.
I had become ill after eating there, and two friends in another state told me they had also become sick after eating at a Subway. That did not prove the restaurant caused any of our illnesses, and it certainly did not establish a wider problem. That was precisely why I asked the question. I wanted to know whether it was a coincidence or whether other people had experienced something similar.
Instead of answering that question, many of the comments focused on a different issue: Why was I eating at Subway in the first place?
Some people suggested that I should have chosen a better restaurant. Others seemed less interested in whether there might be a food-safety concern than in judging the quality of my lunch.
It was a small version of blaming the person who became sick. If I had made a more sophisticated choice, the reasoning seemed to go, I would not have had the problem.
But price is not a food-safety system.
Foodborne illness can begin with contaminated ingredients, an ill food worker, cross-contamination, improper cooling, or food being kept at an unsafe temperature. Those risks are tied to sourcing, handling and preparation, not to how fashionable the dining room is or how large the bill will be. A recent review of outbreak investigations by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention focused on exactly those practical failures. It did not find a menu price that made diners immune.
An expensive restaurant can mishandle food. A sandwich shop, taco stand, or inexpensive family restaurant can follow excellent safety practices. Paying more may change the setting, service, and ingredients, but it does not guarantee against becoming sick.
The comments bothered me for another reason, and this one stayed with me longer.
I ate at Subway because it was close to where I was working that day. I had limited time, needed something fast, and it was the most affordable option within my budget. It was not a statement about Mexican cuisine.
I should not have to present a financial defense of a sandwich. Still, the need to explain it revealed how easily foreigners living in Mexico can assume that everyone has the same choices they do.
We often hear that “Mexico is cheap.” Usually, that statement says more about the person speaking than it does about Mexico. Mexico may feel inexpensive to someone receiving a pension in dollars, earning income from abroad, or arriving with savings accumulated in a wealthier country. That does not mean Mexico is affordable for the people earning Mexican wages and paying Mexican bills.
There is a foreigner economy in many parts of Mexico: restaurant recommendations where price is barely mentioned, rents discussed in dollars, private healthcare treated as the obvious solution, imported groceries placed in the cart without much thought. People can live inside that economy for years and begin to mistake it for Mexico itself.
It is not.
In the first quarter of 2026, INEGI reported that 30.7 percent of Mexico’s population was experiencing labor poverty. That means the labor income available per person in the household was not enough to cover the cost of the basic food basket. A separate INEGI measurement found 38.5 million people living in multidimensional poverty in 2024.
Those figures represent daily decisions. They determine whether a family eats out, postpones a dental visit, replaces a broken appliance, takes a taxi in the rain, or waits until payday. The fast-food restaurant that one foreign resident dismisses as beneath them may be an occasional treat for another family. For someone else, it may simply be the only option that fits the time and money available that day.
There is nothing wrong with enjoying expensive restaurants or spending money you have earned. This is not an argument for guilt. It is an argument for perspective.
The problem begins when financial comfort is mistaken for common sense. “Choose a better restaurant” sounds like advice, but it assumes the person has more time, more money, nearby alternatives, and the ability to absorb the added cost. The same assumption appears when people say they should move to a better neighborhood, use a private hospital, replace the car, hire a lawyer, buy a generator, or simply pay someone to solve the problem.
Sometimes those are useful options. They are not universal solutions.
Foreigners, including me, can live in Mexico for a long time and still miss the economic reality around us. We notice what things cost compared with the United States or Canada. We do not always notice what they cost compared with a Mexican paycheck.
That difference matters. It shapes how we talk about the country and how we respond to the people living beside us. If our answer to every inconvenience is “spend more,” we are not offering wisdom. We are describing our own privilege.
My Facebook question was simple: had other people in Mexico recently become sick after eating at Subway? I was not claiming that Subway had caused an outbreak. I was trying to determine whether there might be a pattern pointing to a broader food-safety concern. Instead, many of the replies focused on why I had not simply gone to a better restaurant, as if everyone has the money and flexible schedule of a comfortable retiree.
Foreigners living in Mexico should be more aware of the privilege behind that assumption. We should be. Many moved here precisely because the life they wanted was more affordable than it would have been in the United States or Canada. There is nothing wrong with that, but it should make us more conscious of financial inequality, not less.
You cannot move to Mexico in search of a life you can better afford and then look down on other people for choosing what they can afford.
The replies led to a different question that foreigners in Mexico should ask ourselves more often whenever we describe something as cheap, affordable, or easy to fix:
Affordable for whom?
Joshua :)
