New York Times journalist Jane Brody suggests that eating dirt is an instinctive behavior in humans. In her article, Eating dirt can be good for you - just ask babies, she interviewed researchers who think people should eat dirt in order to stimulate their immune system.  Brody says that immune system disorders such as asthma and allergies have risen significantly in the United States. 

Although allergies do appear to be on the rise, the awareness of allergies, the ability to diagnose allergies, and the number of people at risk (the U.S. population) have also risen significantly. 

The director of gastroenterology and hepatology at Tufts Medical Center in Boston, Dr. Joel Weinstock, said in the interview,

"There are very few diseases that people get from worms. Humans have adapted to the presence of most of them. … Children should be allowed to go barefoot in the dirt, play in the dirt, and not have to wash their hands when they come in to eat…let kids have two dogs and a cat, which will expose them to intestinal worms that can promote a healthy immune system.”

Dr. Weinstock, I’m sure glad you aren’t my doctor. 

I agree that immune systems are naturally stimulated by various exposures to the environment, and that Americans use too many antibacterial products, but I question Dr. Weinstock’s knowledge of zoonotic diseases.  Intestinal parasites from animals that infect humans, since many are not adapted to humans, often leave the intestines and migrate through the body.  There are approximately 10,000 human cases of larva migrans in the U.S. each year.  Unfortunately, most of these cases are in children, and a few of these kids die.

Eating dirt is an instinct?  Not for me.  Babies eat dirt because they don’t know better.  Some may think that bad behavior is an instinct, but calling bad behavior an instinct doesn’t excuse it.  Bad advice shouldn’t be excused either. 

Dirt may have poop in it, so don’t eat it.

 

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Received an email from a company running a contest for the Scott Paper and White Cloud toilet paper today asking about a previous barfblog post on dirty bathrooms:

We are running an online contest for Scott Paper and White Cloud toiler paper in an effort to find America’s Worst Bathroom.  We have been notified by several entrants about an entry with a photo that appeared on your blog.  The link to the entry is here. Could you please contact me either via e-mail or; better yet, by phone as soon as possible?  I am trying to find out who owns the copyright for the image in question.  Did you take the photo?  If so, I have to remove this entry and replace it with another.  If not, the entry stays in the contest and I don’t have to make any changes.

Sounds like a serious contest.  I didn't take the original picture, found it somewhere on the interwebs using Google Image Search (like a lot of the barfblog photos).  Go check out the contest and vote for the dirtiest bathroom.

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I don't believe they are.  I think there are lots of food businesses that have spotless toilets and bad food safety practices.  Ron Pelger of the Produce News suggests they are a good indicator:

The next time you go into a restaurant, I highly recommend that you visit the restroom first to check out the sanitation conditions of the establishment before ordering and eating your meal. Give it the old once-, twice- and three-times-over inspection. If it passes your examination, the restaurant must have high cleanliness standards.

Really? Pelger sounds pretty trusting. There is some great literature that suggests that inspection scores are not a good indicator of whether a restaurant is going to make someone ill. Should consumers also ask to see the conditions of the bathrooms and port-a-potties on farms and make decisions based on that? I don't think so. I think we should be basing our decisions on what a produce distributor (grower/packer/shipper) can prove about the food safety practices on the farm, not what is possible to clean-up in preparation for a planned audit.

Pelger also writes:

There are many scenarios in the produce industry that can lead to product contamination. Through a sophisticated trace-back process, product can be traced to its original source. In the recent past, foodborne illness outbreaks were linked to spinach, lettuce and tomatoes. These cases have been traced back to their sources and the problems corrected. But what about areas other than farms? Could contamination be happening in other links of the food chain as well?

Pelger is right that food safety is a farm-to-fork, food system issue -- but he unfortunately comes across as whining about how it's not always farms (true) without suggesting how the entire supply chain should get together and address it. If an industry truly believes in the everyone-has-a-role-to-play mantra, they should help their partners (upstream and downstream) in producing safe food. And tell everyone about it.

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