Beware The Dreaded Ecoli!
Friends, this morning while news-grazing, I caught an add for a kitchen detergent.
The scene was of a sparkling, huge, ultra-modern kichen complete with acres of stainless steel and plastic laminate and state of the art appliances.
It showed a smartly dressed, pretty woman spotting a mark on the sink. The mark was magnified to show a cartoon representation of ecoli bacteria spreading like wildfire. The shriek of a violin could be heard. My stress level rose!
Then she brandished this bottle of green liquid, gave the spot a quick spray, and the bacteria disappeared, its threat gone. Soft music played and the woman looked pleased, her family safe.
I managed to stifle an urge to immediately drive thirty kilometres down to the supermarket to buy some green detergent and banish all life-threatening bacteria from my world but unfortunately I couldn’t remember the name of the product. As well, I still had my pyjamas on.
Later, when sanity prevailed, I did a bit of reflecting then some digging in Goggle Images.
The result of my search is shown above. It shows a kitchen of sorts. In Chad. Probably there are a lot of really dangerous bacteria present, a lot of it in the drinking water.
The kitchen has plenty of fresh air, a feeling of space though no running water or a dishwasher. The stove certainly isn’t stainless steel and there’s no plastic laminate to be seen although the neighbours certainly are.
The cooking ware wouldn’t win any designer awards but I guess it is functional. The cooks are brightly dressed and they are treating their chores with seriousness. It’s probably more related to staving off starvation than concerns about ecoli and not having a bright green, ecoli-smashing detergent.
Yes, we certainly live in a world of extremes, one where, according to some, market forces are supposed to provide all the answers.
It could be argued that market forces provide most of the problems.
Not for the rich of course! They love markets.
It really amazes me these cans of bacteria killers and the like, for thousands of year’s people have cooked like the people displayed in your picture above. Indeed some have even done it harder with no pots or pans. Yet these dangerous bacteria’s were never an issue, my family cooked by a fire for generations and none have been infected with these killer bacteria’s. In fact could I even suggest that unclean cooking (by western standards) like above actually built peoples immune systems up to a point where these bacteria are no problem even when present.
The other side of the coin is where people use these cans of bacteria killer, that the affects of allergies have increased ten fold, as people have no immunity or tolerance to low doses of these ancient bacteria because of over hygiene. Bacteria has a niche, it is around for a reason. Bacteria’s have not been killed off by a more hygiene conscience society it will always be around. For new parents let your kids eat dirt, it is better than any medicine and it’s free and the benefits to building your child’s immune system are tremendous.
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The point you make is a good one, Kemosobi! We in thinking that cleanliness is next to godliness may well have created a rod for our own backs.
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bring back the old ‘elbow grease’……………..
not to fear though, a new strain of swine flu has just been detected in canada…….
the flus will get us before the bacteria…………….
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and another ‘scary’ discovery: (mad) scientists in the north of england have created an artificial human sperm………………..
don’t they know we are ‘overpopulated’???????
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Therese Reply:
July 10th, 2009 at 9:37 pm
“An artificial human sperm” has been created in the north of England”, are you kidding us? I have got to investigate. First time I read this.
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If it’s true that the microbian (ecoli) / world, works also as Darwin has described it, by selection of the fittest, then why, I ask, not to take the full consequences of those facts.
It sparks me to think of, when outbreaks of foot-and-mouth-epidimics occur, with hundreds and thousands of cattles ‘cunned’ (a word I cannot find in my dictionary) but killed because of the sickness – as a result – and nothing evolving of the fittest is achieved.
In this way people (mankind on behalf of bovines) do not give any change for surviving of the fittest!.- like a sound cattle-bread (for the future) – and will never get rid of these kind of decease, which, in this way, be allow to go on with these cattle massacres forever.
Human beings have to except sacrifices – that it takes life to evolve the fittest.
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coco Reply:
July 9th, 2009 at 1:11 am
excellent point john………..
the word you are looking for is ‘culled’……….you’ll find it now in your dictionary.
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I can still remember as a child the surprise I felt when I learned that not everyone in the world lived the way we do in the US. As an adult I continue to be horified at how so much of the rest of the world lives and the excess with which we in the US live. Even the poor, unless you are homeless, have so much more than the majority of the people in the rest of the world.
I am sure my grandson will have a healthy immune system since he eats dirt on a regular basis. I feel it is important that he get outside, play in the dirty natural world and come to love that world.
Too many children today spend too much time indoors. You rarely see children outside at paly anymore, especially in middle income suburbs, they spend all their time in front of TVs and computers.
The changes that are coming to our “life style” will be even harder on them than the rest of us.
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http://www.alternet.org/healthwellness/141196/10_dangerous_household_products_you_should_never_use_again/
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Well, cholera and typhus do wipe out a lot of people without clean water supplies.
However, I totally agree with you that the attempt to wipe out bacteria is fruitless and absurd.
We have more bacteria cells in our body than we do our own cells.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080603085914.htm
We depend on bacteria to live.
I am a nurse in a hospital. I read the literature, which talks about overuse of antibiotics as leading to resistant bacteria. Then I am told to give antibiotics to people with viruses and spray antibacterial substances on all surfaces. Don’t they read the literature?
I have taught my co-workers not to spray air fresheners when I am around. If they get a patient with body odor or other foul-smelling emissions, they spray. Here’s the thing. Remove the source of odor and it dissipates quickly. But the spray is formulated to linger in the air for a very long time. They think this is good. I think it’s bad.
I have had people freak out because the people before them didn’t flush the toilet! They refuse to pee into a toilet that already has urine in it. Are they nuts? How is this a threat to their health? Have they never used an outhouse? I think that using 2 or 3 gallons of water to flush a few ounces of urine is a waste.
Here’s a link to kids and dirt.
http://newsletter.vitalchoice.com/e_article001334309.cfm?x=b8drcdL,b5PRNLJ0,w
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Coco, swine flu and artificial sperm, eh! Excuse me while I go crazy.
John, we don’t have survival of the fittest anymore. It’s survival of the rich and powerful now!
Jeannie, the soft life is killing those in affluent countries while those in poor countries starve to death. Ironic, eh?
Thanks for the link, David!
Wagelaborer, thanks for an excellent comment and your commonsense approach to things.
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It seems to be a widely held belief that the ubiquity of MRSA bacteria in hospitals is a direct result of the use of anti-bacterial soaps to scrub down everything inside those places. My thought is that they’re not changing the water in the buckets they’re using often enough and are spreading it around.
With the half-assed medical care provided in America today, the complaints of the lack of availability remind me of complaining about the quality of food in a restaurant, and the diminutive portions at the same time. We’re way better off without gov’t endorsed health care.
I have used a zapper off and on for several years. My tumors fell off. Minor respiratory infections have only occurred when I wasn’t using it, and vanish overnight when I wear it. Some claim zappers cure Hepatitis C, Aids, Herpes, and every other undesirable virus, (anerobic)bacteria, disease organism, or parasite (but don’t harm the healthy aerobic bacteria in the gut.)
Here’s a good link on the biowarfare now being waged against America by various agencies of the New World Order.
http://www.ednews.org/articles/h1n1-biowar.html
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Therese Reply:
July 10th, 2009 at 9:46 pm
What is a zapper, Bobo? It has done all that for you. My goodness. I need to investigate more about that phenomenon also.
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So, Bobo, how do you think that you can get MRSA from a clean surface? Even if it was cleaned with water changed infrequently?
You need to go back up and reread the original post about irrational fears of surfaces!
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