Eating Dirty Fruit And Vegetables

Antibiotics And Dirt by Jane Thurnell-Read

In a previous article I talked about dirt and the immune system - how exposure to a certain level of dirt is thought to rebalance the baby's immune system, and minimise the risk of allergies.

Reading an article 'How To Find New Antibiotics' by Jo Handlesman in The Scientist set me thinking about this topic again.

Most of the antibiotics in use today, come originally from cultured soil bacteria, but over 99% of soil bacteria have not been assessed in this way. The article is talking about some new technology - metagenomics - which will make this process easier. I wasn't really that interested in that part of the article, as I do not believe finding new antibiotics is the long-term solution to problems, but the fact that these antibiotics are secreted by soil bacteria is interesting.

When I was young, we bought vegetables and fruit with dirt on them, and though we washed them, we didn't necessarily remove all the dirt. Now in these hygienic days with commercial cleaning of vegetables and fruit it has all been removed. 

So my question is: Have we lost a valuable source of natural antibiotics that we have evolved to use? I suspect the answer to this question is 'yes'. This thinking and that of my previous article on the immune system and dirt has made me much less thorough about removing every scrap of dirt from the vegetables and fruit I buy. 

Janice Hocking contacted me after this article to tell me about products using soil based organisms sold byof Kiki Ltd - she has been having success with these for some of her clients.

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