# Shipping food in



## OnTheRoadToMexico (Jun 12, 2013)

Searched the forum but couldn't find anything on this: Can you or can you not ship *non-perishable* food into Mexico?

Regulations I've seen only prohibit perishable foods. If I can't find some of my more esoteric foodstuffs in MX, I figured I'd get them from Amazon, etc and ship them.

Does anybody have any first-hand (or second-hand) experience with this?


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## Anonimo (Apr 8, 2012)

We have _carried_ non perishable specialty foods in on flights from the U.S. It's a hassle, meeting TSA regulations and airline baggage limits. On our next visit, I have a very small, limited shopping list.

Overall, the longer we live here, the more we find specialty foods of the type to which we are accustomed in better Mexican supermarkets. Last week, I even saw small jars (expensive) of chunky peanut butter. But I no longer care for peanut butter and I don't miss it.


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## Hound Dog (Jan 18, 2009)

[_QUOTE=aquikittykitty;1205697]Searched the forum but couldn't find anything on this: Can you or can you not ship *non-perishable* food into Mexico?

Regulations I've seen only prohibit perishable foods. If I can't find some of my more esoteric foodstuffs in MX, I figured I'd get them from Amazon, etc and ship them.

Does anybody have any first-hand (or second-hand) experience with this?[/QUOTE]_

As Anonimo posted, the longer you live here the less inportant this international shipping of foods difficult to find in Mexico becomes. The degree of difficulty in finding these foods depends on where you live down here. For instance, here at Lake Chapala with its large population of U.S. and Canadian expats, many items favored by(U.S. and Canadian) foriegners but not Mexicans are easy to find while in the Chiapas Highlands where we also live, where there are fewer expats and those that are there are are mostly European, these sorts of items are difficult to impossible to find but - on the other hand - many other items favored by Mexicans are available and you will, if you are like many of us, adapt to that fact over time and forget the old habits. I still carry several jars of Best Foods Mayonnaise from Lake Chapala to Chiapas when I go there but that´s about it and in the Chiapas Highlands, where it gets quite cold at night, you find a selection of exquisite greens (freshly grown at nearby milpas and harvested that morning) at the indigenous market you cannot normally find at Lake Chapala. Everything is a trade-off.

By the way, since there is a fairly large Italian colony at San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas, the pizza is way better there than at Lake Chapala. So that tells me that the important thing to do here is move down and explore what is available whereever you move and - to finally answer your question - you can ship in some non-perishable food items you miss from international suppliers but after you pay the costs including tariffs - you will probably get over that from a cost/benefit point of view. 

That having been said; my kingdom for a Caspers Hot Dog and cold beer at a picnic on the grass at the lake in Downtown Oakland but then I want out of there as soon as I have finished lunch.

Since you are coming down from Washington State, a crate of smoked wild salmon is my charge for the above advice.


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