Hi Mr. Bails,
The typical
answer is "it depends"... which is never actually helpful :)
It seems like you got a lot of good answers in your other post on sort of the same topic. So to summarize what others have already mentioned, don't eat stuff that looks or smells bad. Make sure your soil is living and healthy. Wash your food before eating it. Cook your food before eating it.
Having said that, I would like to remind you (and others who read this), that sterile doesn't really exist in nature. This world is covered in microorganisms. They are generally grouped into 5 categories - bacteria, viruses, archaea, fungi, and protists (yeah, I had to look up the last three). Each group has some that are good and some that are bad. In other words some are helpful and some are pathogens. These exist everywhere. They are on our skin, in our bodies, in the air we breath, on the surfaces that we touch, in the
water that we drink and on the food we eat. When we sanitize things we kill every microorganism. Sometimes I think this is necessary. But I want to compare it to prey and predators of a larger size. If you have trouble with
rabbits eating your garden, and you kill every living thing around you... the rabbits will come back and overpopulate much more quickly than the predators will come back to help keep them under control. If you kill all the bugs in your garden, trust me the aphids will come back much faster and in greater numbers than the ladybugs and other things that eat them. And the same thing happens with microorganisms. The good bacteria will come back much more slowly while the bad bacteria overpopulates quickly. We are now finding that the bacteria in our gut has a huge amount of control over our cravings. Certain bacteria want sugar and if you have a lot of that kind, they will send sugar craving signals to your brain so you will eat sugar and that bacteria can increase. Other kinds of bacteria help your immune system and digestion. Some kinds of bacteria affect your mental health. There was a study that found that people with autism have a completely different set of gut bacteria than people who do not have it. They have found that certain bacteria can effect weight gain and loss. It's kind of incredible what these little guys can do. Again, there are some bad, but there are lots and lots of good ones. Wash your hands and cook your food, certainly... but maybe we don't need to be quite as worried if we get a mouthful of dirt here or there.
***Edit - Just fixing a couple typos
6
