Well one thing about seatbelts if you don’t wear them you could die or be severely disabled. If you don’t wash your fruit you are more likely to just be out for a day. Though looking up statistics I see the CDS says about 3200 die in the US of food borne illnesses while it’s more than 10 times that amount for car accidents.
I think I’m becoming one of those old people who have trouble eating cucumbers. So I was looking up online how to deal with it. Basically, you should buy “bitter free” varieties but you should also cut off the stem end (at least an inch) and peel the whole thing. And, you should wash your knife and peeler frequently so that you don’t transfer the cucur-chemical from the peel and stem end to the part you will be eating. A strange reason to wash but a valid one!
In both cases, you’d want to know how many of those deaths would have been prevented by home food washing or seatbelt wearing.
No, you’re talking about subjective opinions. Telling me my not wanting to eat dirty, unwashed produce is irrational is the same as me telling you that your dislike of broccoli or brussels sprouts is irrational. I don’t LIKE unwashed produce. Every single time I go to the grocery store, I witness people picking up fruit, squeezing it, putting it back down, and grabbing another one. They have undoubtedly touched their eyes/mouth/nose before doing that. MANY people don’t wash after using the bathroom. I don’t care if it doesn’t give me e-coli to eat something Joe Schmo touched with his bare, dirty hands, it is GROSS to me to eat it without giving it a good rinse. And that’s not irrational.
Well, maybe “irrational” is too loaded a word, although to me it just means that there isn’t a logical fact-based reason for the preference. I mean, I understand why people didn’t want to drink the water from the reservoir, but to me that reaction isn’t “rational.”
On another note, my kid did a class germ study in lower school and the toilet levers were surprisingly germ free while the handles of the toaster oven were a major problem.
I had a friend who was a microbiologist whose focus was transmission- sheesh, if you’re prone to worrying, just do what you can.
Dislike of broccoli IS irrational. Brussels sprouts need to be deep-fried and drizzled with sweetness.
^^My husband hates brussels sprouts with an irrational passion, so I don’t cook them. But I have fond memories of picking them off the giant stems with my grandfather as a kid and he’d fry them in butter for us. Sooooo good…
Seriously, I need to put in a vegetable garden this year. Maybe I’ll go vertical.
There have been loads of reports and studies done which conclude that the use of antibacterials for everyday/common usage heighten the environment for the very bacteria that we wish to eradicate from our lives to grow. The bacteria "learn"and evolve in response to the germicidal exposure and then become stronger, and then we are left vulnerable to a “super”-something.
At any rate, we’ll each do as we see fit, and will alter our behaviors as our experience makes necessary.
I launder the dish towels and such in very hot water, with vinegar added, and also zap the pillows on High for 30 minutes every weekend. I wash them more often than others do, I presume, but not every weekend. However, laundering the guest hand towels with my kitchen items simply would not make me comfortable.
Someone had mentioned that they wash their hands before they use the bathroom. One of the things that I’ve recently learned is that you have a colony of bacteria, fungi and other goodies native to your body, which protect you.
So, it’s not always a good thing to strip those off by washing and possibly expose yourself to pathogens. In this vein, I shower AFTER hot yoga, not before, because the amount of MRSA and athlete’s foot in that room is epic, and I like to go in with a little invisible suit of armor.
Afterwards, however, I sit on a towel in the car, wash my hands before I leave the gym, and EVERYTHING I’m wearing and the yoga mat and towel go in the “sanitize” cycle on my washing machine.
Then I take a shower. Because pew!
I do not do half of what you all do. I don’t sit on a towel in the car. I just wash my workout clothes in regular wash, nothing special, and yeah, maybe kitchen towels are in there too. Honestly some of what seems “normal” and “rational” to you seems like over-the-top and irrational to me. I just don’t have this fear of creepy-crawlies all over the place that some of you have.
Re: #108, I understand about different laundry preferences. Between the very hot water (>140), detergent, Borax and a white vinegar rinse, I think we’re okay with washing guest towels and kitchen towels together. If someone using those towels was sick then I’d probably separate that laundry. My washer has a deep clean cycle which boosts the water temp with its on board heater and I use its allergen cycle for bed linens. I also run its self-cleaning cycle with Affresh every 4 - 6 weeks.
I don’t use hand soaps labeled antibacterial, mainly because the ones I tried caused a rash reaction. It was later that I read about concerns regarding over use of such products.
FWIW, when we were in college, my not-yet dh often did laundry for both of us and as I recall he just tossed everything in together. Now that makes me cringe. Growing up, I frequently went barefoot (when we lived in a beach town), and I rode my bike for miles without a helmet - not yet so risk averse. There wasn’t bottled water or cute little water carriers then, so I’d look for someone out gardening and ask for a drink of water from the hose. Obviously I survived, but admit that when the stories hit about H. Pylori bacteria causing ulcers I wondered if that hose water had anything to do with my ulcers as a teenager.
I wash my hands before using the bathroom if I’ve done something like, I don’t know, teaching where I’m exposed to many students and chalkboards and chalk etc. I don’t tend to use soap beforehand, just rinse with water.
Your good bacteria are your good bacteria, and while I don’t like antibacterial soaps, plain soap and a light washing cannot hurt. The point is that your entrenched good bacteria won’t be denuded, and the surface bad bacteria will be washed away.
A towel in the car after the gym is to avoid future stink which is a symptom of bad bacteria or mold growing. If you have leather or leather-like seats, no towel is fine. No towel after the gym on cloth seats is stupid, not rational. And I am not the cleanest in the bunch.
MRSA and athlete’s foot are two logical concerns, but handwashing (or foot washing) won’t help necessarily; to avoid MRSA, treat any wounds early and carefully look for signs of infection, to avoid athlete’s foot make sure your feet are clean and dry as much as possible - either remove socks as soon as possible after sports or working out, or switch to clean socks afterwards.
I always wash fruit with water only, no soap or anything else, because the sanitary facilities at farms with itinerant workers are not the best. It is not reactionary to wash fruit when you don’t know where it’s been - you don’t know if it dropped on the floor at the grocery store or any time before that. It won’t harm the fruit unless you wash it and put it away, which would be silly.
No. and I don’t worry about it at all. I’m not about to sterlize my fruit and vegetables and rinsing with water won’t do a darn thing that I care about.
Guess I’m derailing here, but I was once at a woman’s house and she was stirring the pot of homemade soup for her family’s dinner when the dog did something to annoy her, so she took the wooden stirrer which was in her hand and smacked the dog with it to get it to leave her alone, then stirred the pot again.
I declined the invite to dinner.
I wash my produce and I do wash my hands frequently. I try to use common sense as it relates to cleaning surfaces after dealing with raw chicken and things of that nature, but other than that, I don’t spend a lot of energy trying to protect myself from germs.
I do, however, admit to having an irrational fear of heights.
“MRSA and athlete’s foot are two logical concerns, but handwashing (or foot washing) won’t help necessarily; to avoid MRSA, treat any wounds early and carefully look for signs of infection, to avoid athlete’s foot make sure your feet are clean and dry as much as possible - either remove socks as soon as possible after sports or working out, or switch to clean socks afterwards.”
Incorrect. Hand washing is the #1 weapon against MRSA spread. Ask any nurse working in a VA hospital.
Treating wounds with a common antibiotic will NOT help against MRSA - the “R” is for “resistant” to methicillin and other common antibiotics.
http://www.m.webmd.com/skin-problems-and-treatments/news/20071107/hand-washing-is-best-mrsa-weapon
This is scary to watch but should be seen, especially by west coast people who get chicken from one of those plants they focus on. You can wash a lot, and still get very, very sick. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t wash. I wish the government had classified salmonella as an “adulterant” like it did with e coli.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/trouble-with-chicken/
I guess I just don’t see the world as one big set of germs poised to attack me! With the exception of getting dysentery in India last year, I just have no need to think about this stuff!
I havent read the rest of the post, but it is required in food service that you rinse all fruit under cold water for at least 20 seconds prior to eating.