Eat More Dirt

A farmer in West Virginia blogs:

My morning routine gets me moving and my brain awakening. After I get my coffee and breakfast prepared, I carry it to my desk where the computer is first turned to email.  I was happy to see today that this blog has a new subscriber who lives in the Philappines. We can safely assume she will not be shopping our farmers markets but something I wrote struck a cord for her and she signed on. Welcome!  The local food movement is growing!

As I wandered down my email I came to my daily subscription for the New York Times. One of the op-ed pieces caught my eye and I want to share it with you: Dirtying Up Our Diets was written by Jeff D. Leach, a science and archaeology writer and founder of the Human Food Project. In the New York Times piece Leach poses one benefit to the increase in farmers market participation that I had not considered: we will be eating more dirt!

During the 20th century more Americans moved off the farm into the cities and no longer grew a good percentage of their own food. As food distribution industrialized, packaging of fresh produce became more prevalent and now we can get prewashed plastic bags of salads, vegetables all cut up ready for stir frying, and even prepared trays of fruit to bring to the next office party.

That popular time saving package saves you germs too. Sounds good, right?

Well, Leach says it is not all good. While he is not truly suggesting that we actually go eat some dirt and therefore ingest some harmful bacteria, he does say that all this washing has resulted in a reduction of the GOOD bacteria that our guts need.” Get more here: Eat More Dirt « wvfarm2u.