Mexico City*.

According to a telephone poll, 66% of Mexicans who eat tacos in the street maintain that they haven´t become ill from doing so and 71.8 % believe that there are stalls that use dog and horse meat in their tacos.

Tacos took out first place as the preferred snack with a total of 27.7 % of those surveyed choosing them, almost 4 times greater than the 7.1% who chose tortas (Mexican sandwiches).

Enchiladas took out second place in preferences with 25.8%, quesadillas third place with 15.9%,  sopes fourth place with 9.3% of the total,  tortas were back in fifth place with the aforementioned  7.1% while huaraches were in sixth place with 4.4%.  A further 5.8% didn´t nominate any snack and 3.3% cited others.

According to the poll conducted by the consultancy firm Cabinet of Strategic Communication, 15.7% of those surveyed consider tacos to be ¨a full meal¨.  The majority, some 60.9% stated that they eat tacos in restaurants, 28.4% at street stalls and just 2.8% in both places.

Of every 100 Mexicans, 45 prefer to eat tacos at night, 38 prefer them for lunch while just 9% for breakfast and 3 at any time.

The consultancy also enquired if people preferred tacos to tortas.  Tacos won with an overwhelming majority of 78.6%, almost 5 times more in comparison with the 16.7% who responded that they preferred  tortas.  Tortas, however, were the winners over hamburgers with 68.3% of the vote compared to 25.8%.

Another questions was ¨have you ever got sick from eating tacos or tortas in the street? ¨ 66.1% responded that they hadn´t, 28.1% said that they had while 5.4% declared that they don´t eat in the street.

Finally, the consultacy firm asked those surveyed whether they believed that there were street establishments in Mexico that use meat of animals which are not considered edible in this country, like dog and horse.

The majority, 71.8% answered in the affirmative, 18.8% said no while the remaining 9.4% didn´t respond or stated that they didn´t know.

The survey was conducted to 600 people over the age of 18 who have a fixed telephone line in their home and the respondents are situated in all states of the country.

* Translated from article in La Jornada written by Susana Gonzalez G.  Read the original in Spanish here.