He writes:
"As health-giving as those bundles of mouthwatering leafy greens and crates of plump tomatoes are, the greatest social contribution of the farmers’ market may be its role as a delivery vehicle for putting dirt back into the American diet and in the process, reacquainting the human immune system with some “old friends.”
Increasing evidence suggests that the alarming rise in
allergic and autoimmune disorders during the past few decades is at least partly
attributable to our lack of exposure to microorganisms that once covered our
food and us. As nature’s blanket, the potentially pathogenic and benign
microorganisms associated with the dirt that once covered every aspect of our
preindustrial day guaranteed a time-honored co-evolutionary process that
established “normal” background levels and kept our bodies from overreacting to
foreign bodies. This research suggests that reintroducing some of the organisms
from the mud and water of our natural world would help avoid an overreaction of
an otherwise healthy immune response that results in such chronic diseases as
Type 1 diabetes, inflammatory bowel disease and a host of
allergic disorders.
In a world of hand sanitizer and wet wipes (not to mention double tall skinny
soy vanilla lattes), we can scarcely imagine the preindustrial lifestyle that
resulted in the daily intake of trillions of helpful organisms.
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