A Little Dirt
Here is a simple statement of fact: Food comes from dirt. Because food comes from dirt, there is no way to totally eliminate dirt from food. Here is another simple statement of fact: Germs are EVERYWHERE. Let us get a bit more technical and say that microorganisms are everywhere. Microorganisms include basically all those tiny living things we cannot see with the naked eye, such as germs (really an informal word for microorganisms), bacteria, viruses, fungi, and the occasional tiny insect like dust mites. The good news is that many bacteria are harmless and many bacteria are actually beneficial.
A silly internet video last week started me thinking about how our collective ideas about food safety and sanitation have changed drastically over my lifetime. Those around my age and older remember things like Thanksgiving dinner being left out on the kitchen counter all day so people could come back and get a plate of leftovers any time they wanted. They remember taking a sack lunch to school in an actual paper sack with no icepacks and no refrigerators to hold them until lunch time. How did we all survive? The silly internet video ended with the idea that we, the older generations, may be superhuman in some way.
Somehow we have gotten the idea that it is possible to completely sanitize things in our world, even food. We have gotten so carried away that some of us even think that it is unsanitary for anyone preparing food in their own home to do so with bare, ungloved hands—what makes us think those gloves are sterile, by the way? I have observed this trend growing over many years, but it certainly reached its peak with the pandemic. Of course it is a good idea to do what you can to avoid microorganisms that will definitely make you sick, like viruses and food borne pathogens like salmonella, but it is basically impossible to live in a sterilized world. It is my opinion and I am backed up by science, that we have shot ourselves in the foot with an overabundance of microorganism avoidance. We have antibiotic’ed, sanitized, and germ-killed our way into having weakened and hyperreactive immune systems all while wiping out those good little microorganisms who help us stay healthy.
You may notice whenever we hear of a food-borne illness outbreak, the people who get sick are usually those who have compromised or weak immune systems, like very young babies and very elderly people, along with people with suppressed immune systems due to medication or chemotherapy. The rest of us can likely relax a little, especially if we are properly cleaning and preparing our food along with taking reasonable precautions.
I, too, get squeamish if I have a visible bug in my food and sometimes get a little nauseated at a suspicious speck of black pepper, but the fact is if the food has been heated adequately, even a whole bug carcass (that I don’t see) will not make me sick. Ugh, I feel my stomach turning a little. Mind you I will not relax enough to skip washing my hands before cooking or eating!