David Hare-Scott wrote:
> I have just been bombarded with a series of dopy advertisments on TV
> that together say: if you don't use this coloured stuff in your
> toilet, that spray on your benches, floors and almost every surface
> of your house, some perfume or insecticide in this dandy dispenser,
> and half a dozen other cleaning products, then you are a bad parent,
> you will be shunned by your neighbours and you and your family will
> die a lingering death of some disease mediated by green and purple
> monsters.
>
> Almost every day well meant questions are asked here along the lines:
>
> - w has been in the fridge for 3 days
> - x was out of the fridge for 2 minutes
> - y still has it's skin on
> - z was only washed once
> - I wish I had (a tiled floor, or whatever) so my kitchen can be
> really clean
> - etc etc
>
> what should I do, is it safe, and will this horrid lapse cause me
> illness, death or just eternal shame?
>
> We live in a micobiological soup of billions of organisms that occupy
> the air that we breath, the water that we drink and every object that
> we touch. Many of these bugs are pathogenic in the right
> circumsances. Your body is covered with them inside and out no matter
> how much stuff you put in your bath, or spray on to yourself or
> gargle, or the colour of your toilet water. The food that we eat and
> you and I are dirty from the day we are born to the day we die.
>
> Unless you are conducting surgery or are dealing with a person in poor
> health whose imune system is compromised all this fuss over super
> cleanliness is doing nothing but causing you worry and enriching
> vendors who know how to play on your fear and your desire to conform
> and 'do the right thing'. Use common sense cleanliness routines -
> wash your hands, wash your cooking equipment and so forth. Do these
> measures make you and your stuff really clean? No. Neither do all
> the bunkum products
>
> That is why you have an immune system - to deal with the potential
> pathogens. You need keep clean enough to reduce the numbers of the
> bad bugs to the point that the immune system can deal with them and
> to reduce toxins below harmful levels. Simply measures and common
> sense will achieve this. Yes you do need to sterilize things in some
> circumstances (when even a small number of bad bugs will get the time
> and conditions to grow to harmful levels) this is what brewing and
> preserving are all about. In normal cooking sterility is neither
> needed nor possible.
>
> Those routines taught by grandma or in home economics before the era
> of 1001 perfumed sprays were actually pretty useful. So trust your
> nose and your life experience more and relax.
>
> There I feel better now.
>
> David

Hear hear! (although I still want a floor drain to make washing the kitchen
floor easier!)

A long time ago I posted something about a former co-worker whose
grandmother would have lunch ready on the farm around 11AM and set it all on
the table. She just covered it with a cloth and left it there until the
'menfolk' came in from the fields to eat. It sat there for a couple of
hours; we're talking fried chicken or a pot of stew, biscuits (like scones
for those of you in the UK), beans, collard greens. It never killed anyone
in her family to eat it after it sat there unrefrigerated. Try to explain
this to some folks; they'd look at you like you're mad. I often leave food
sitting out and then reheat it later in the day. I'm still alive.

Aside from that, I don't want the water in my toilet to be blue. <G>

Jill