Dirty
Apparently, the Government are concerned about public hygiene standards, and they’ve been having a go at shows like Ready Steady Cook as major culprits. Apparently, not washing salad that has been pre-packaged (and already washed because the supermarket’s can’t take the risk not to) will lead to outbreaks of food poisoning in the viewing public, o something equally stupid.
Now, I’m all for public hygiene - I don’t want to got to my local eaterie and come out with food poisoning because the junior chef can’t be bothered to wash his hands after he takes a leak. But I do think we’re taking this obsession with cleanliness to extremes.
When I was growing up, my grandmother used to tell me (usually when I came in the house covered in mud) “you’ll eat a pound of dirt before you die”. There wasn’t the paranoia about dirt and germs back then like there is now, and there weren’t the problems back then like there are now; we didn’t have to worry about c.diff or MRSA. If you went into hospital, the surgeon’s ineptitude was what killed you, not some silly little germ.
And, to my mind, it’s all because we’ve become obsessed with being sterile. All those cleaning products out there that kill 99% of all known germs. But don’t put it down your toilet - that’s not where the germs are, put it on your kitchen surfaces. Don’t let the kids get dirty, they’ll catch something. Don’t this, don’t that, and definitely don’t the other. But if you never get exposed to these things, how do you build up defences against them? Well, you don’t. So, when some bug does come calling your body can’t fight it and you have to turn to the miracles of modern medicine to sort you out. But that doesn’t work for long because bacteria have a very swift evolutionary cycle and every time we come up with a solution to the problem, they just evolve around it and get stronger.
We need to go back to basics, and get a bit dirtier. What does it matter if you don’t wash your salad before you eat it? All shop-bought produce is so sanitised already that it hardly seems worth it - especially if it’s pre-packaged rather than loose. If you’ve picked it from your own garden, you might want to run it under the tap to get the caterpillars and aphids off, but other than who cares? I’ve seen people wash bananas and oranges; why? You peel them before you eat them, so what does it matter?
Less chemicals and more dirt is what we need!
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