Eat Crap: Why Americans should ingest more excrement.

Slate ^ | October 9, 2007 | Kent Sepkowitz

[xjcsa]

One year ago, the now-famous E. coli outbreak arising from contaminated spinach rattled the natural-food industry and gave carnivores a moment of schadenfreude. The story had the heartbreaking elements we have come to dread: A young child eats something mundane and dies a horrid death. Boom, gone. I have (unsuccessfully) treated one such case and rate it as perhaps the most chilling moment of my career. [snip]

Maybe we are taking the wrong approach. Rather than trying to make our food and water ever cleaner, we should focus instead on making sure it's dirty enough to assure our good health.

[snip]

The triumph of Western civilization is, first and foremost, a triumph of pipes and valves and the fact that water runs downhill. Aqueducts bring fresh water in, cobblestoned underground tunnels move used water out, and, presto, our world is clean.

[snip]

But here is the problem: We have become victims of our own success. Ever wonder why your dog can gobble, lick, and gnaw all he wants along the glorious buffet of a city street and (almost) never get sick? Your dog is used to eating shit.

[snip]

There's just too much crap out there: human crap, horse crap, cow crap, pig crap.

[snip]

[P8riot]

Now that does make me sick!

You're probably right.

[Ditter]

Carolyn, people have allergies because they have inherited the allergy gene, not because they are too clean. Allergens... germs.... different things.

[doorgunner69]

Rats can eat all the sh!t they want.

Always thought they were sh!t-eaters anyway. We know one of their main constituencies has a morbid interest in the part of each other's anatomy involved with the production.

[hadit2here]

Veronica Moser, pickup brown courtesy phone. Veronica Moser.

[Secret Agent Man]

I just got a new book from a doctor who studies the inflammatory system. For him he is saying the current American diet is too overloaded with foods that cause the body’s immune system to be ‘on’ all the time and this is the root cuase of allergies, and autoimmune diseases.

There’s a certain kind of acid that gets produced by highly processed and refined foods that triggers chemicals that fire up the immune system defenses and trick it into attacking when there really is nothing there to attack - causing inflammation and destruction of body tissues.

[CDHart]

Yes, but good housekeeping means much less dust and allergens floating around also.

Carolyn

[Ditter]

I too ate mud pies, slept with my dog and cat, walked barefoot in the chicken yard, drank unpasteurized milk, skinned my knees and never heard of Neosporin. Don’t think that is the reason you have no allergies. I was a severely allergic asthmatic child and I still count allergies as my one and only health problem and I am 67. My brother is 62 and he is the same.

We inherited our allergies from our parents.

Allergies and auto immune diseases are the result of an ‘over active immune system’ not one from living in a sterile environment.