LA Food Trucks Are Delicious But Dirty, According to Health Inspectors

Every day, a mobile fleet of food trucks is deployed across America to feed the legions of dreary office workers and wacked-out festival-goers looking for a cheap, quick fix.

And while many are delicious, innovative, and downright awesome, there is also a downside to such convenience. In Los Angeles, where food trucks have become a staple, the challenges of feeding people from tiny, travelling kitchens has become a health issue.

According to the LA Times, food truck kitchens are significantly less sanitary than restaurants and even street food carts. After poring over two years' worth of Los Angeles County Department of Public Health data, the LA Times found that 27 percent of food trucks in the city earned a grade lower than A.

That number may not sound like a whole lot on its own, but when you consider that only 5 percent of brick-and-mortar restaurants and 18 percent of food carts fell below the Grade A line, it's cause for concern. In fact, more than 4 percent of food trucks inspected by the city were forced to shut down; again, a number that might seem low, but is actually three times the rate of full-service restaurants that were forced to close.

Still, it's not like food truck owners and operators are a bunch of unsanitary people. Rather, experts who spoke to the LA Times suggested that confined spaces and limited equipment make it difficult to regulate storage temperature and cross-contamination.

"If I serve you and I also prepare the food, there's a little bit of a problem right there with health issues, potentially," said Davila, academic director of the Food Industry Management Program at USC.

And while only 0.2 percent of restaurants inspected in LA have earned a dreaded C grade—the lowest possible—4.2 percent of food trucks have. All in all, the report is a pretty damning one for food truck owners and workers, like Isabel Ariza, an employee of the Tacos Ariza truck in Echo Park which recently got a C after inspectors took issue with hand-washing and glove use.

"It's not as simple as it seems," Ariza told the LA Times. "It's hard to keep everything in one compact space. They really expect a lot from us. We try our best to be prepared but [inspectors] always try to find something. It's hard to get an A grade."

But anyone hoping to get perfectly sanitary food from a truck is kind of missing the point of street food.