PrintCrap: It's Healthier Than You Think
Is super-sanitized food good for us in the long run or is it giving us weak digestive systems? Kent Sepkowitz of Slate magazine gives reasons "Why Americans should ingest more excrement."
No, you don't have to eat the stuff out of a bowl, but a pathogen or two won't kill you. Sepkowitz explains the current situation with our mostly squeaky clean food supply.
Our food is hosed and boiled and rinsed and detoxified and frozen and salted and preserved. Recently, we have begun to irradiate it, too—just in case. As a result, when our bodies encounter the occasional inevitable bug, they're unhappy. Our centuries-long program of winnowing out all the muck has turned us into sissies and withered the substantial part of the immune system mediated by our intestinal tract.
Instead of obsessing over killing all possibly harmful organisms in our food, Sepkowitz suggests that scientists should find out how much crap we can safely eat and how much we need to eat to stay healthy.
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7 Comments:
Does McDonald's count as crap?
Also, did you do the crap drawing, Robyn? If so, crap has never looked so cute.
Marvo at 7:41PM on 10/10/07
I recall, about 20 ... 25 years ago, reading that each of us probably eats a bushel of dirt in our lifetime. I wonder if that's now down to a half bushel?
LunaPierCook at 8:08PM on 10/10/07
This article was featured on Slate's Daily Podcast. At 33, I know I'm supposed to be "mature" and all, but hearing Dale Willman's serious, NPR voice say "how much shit can we safely eat" makes me giggle.
dansays at 8:17PM on 10/10/07
Marvo: It's a different kind of crap! Woo!
Yes, I did draw the crap. A pile of poop is oddly fun to draw. :D I think Japan figured that out a while ago.
roboppy at 8:19AM on 10/11/07
"Instead of obsessing over killing all possibly harmful organisms in our food...."
But .... but .... then we won't live forever!
srhcb at 8:35AM on 10/11/07
According to poison control (a long funny story) kids eat five pounds of dirt before they hit kindergarten. I'm okay with dirt. I am pickier about my crap. I prefer grassfed ground meat for that reason. If there is any crap in there, it's not the evil kind developed in feed lots. McDonald's is crap. But it's the additives and other chemicals that are disturbing.
ExpatChef at 10:37AM on 10/11/07
I say we follow the 3-second rule... anything that falls off your spoon/fork/fingers/eating implement can be picked up, puffed at (to blow the germs off), and eaten... as long as it's within 3 seconds ;)
onedaylingers at 3:56PM on 10/11/07