Hacker News Reader

Comment by jackhack | Hacker News Reader

Correct. 200,000 years dying at an early age from easily-preventable infections, among them cholera and dysentery which are easily spread from --yep, you guessed it-- not washing after using the toilet.

And people wonder why I refuse to take part in "potluck" lunches, or eat others' foods. I need to save the URL to this discussion.

I, too, cannot believe someone who does not use soap does not smell like a wild animal. It is surely a case of adaptation. Hoarders who live with hundreds of animals and urine/feces littering the floor claim they cannot smell the ammonia. They have adapted.

People of hackernews, wash your filthy hands with hot water and soap. (that's not an insult, it's an trivially-proven factual assertion: unwashed hands are filthy.)

View on HN

Oof, do you also wear gloves 24/7 to protect yourself from the dirty world out there too?

Unless your immunocomprimised or old, your body's immune system can handle the everyday bacteria that is everywhere in the world.

There's a reason that food safety protocols in the restaurant biz are pretty strict: you don't get a biological adaptation to eating feces by eating a little feces here and there. There's a reason (well, really, several) humanity switched to processing food and water with heat (cooking meat, drinking coffee and tea) when we were coming down out of the trees.

Trying to make fun of someone who's being careful about what they eat is pretty insulting.

The hypochondriac / overactive purity instinct / easy to insult temperament hurts their life and the life of people around them by making them annoying and unpleasant to be around. Also by keeping things super 'clean', they increase the likelihood of their children to develop lifelong allergies. They deserve to be mocked.

Food processing laws are there because certain bad things do happen at scale in factories & restaurants that don't happen in home kitchens and when they are personally eating things in the world around them. The laws have to protect the very young, sick and the very old with their compromised immune systems. So there are different standards for different circumstances.

There is also a matter of degree. A commercial food chef needs to wash their hands, a healthy adult person eating prepared meals by other people doesn't need to wear gloves everywhere to be safe.

Also a lot of restaurants and farms are pretty gross places, go work at a fast food place, butcher, meat processing factory and cow farm to see how gross it gets, even with food safety laws & inspections.

Or unless you inherited those beliefs from your parents, who kept you oversanitary as a child. Then the world really is very dangerous for you; childhood is the best time to get exposed to stuff.

No, you'll be fine and you'll quickly gain missing immunities, if you have any. A good chunk of the behaviors might even be counterproductive.

I hope so, I've heard otherwise. I was personally a filthy kid, so I'm not talking about me.

My wife was a severely germ-sheltered child like that. She has overcome it, and she does not get sick any more than I, a pretty grimy/dirty/often-filthy farm kid, do.

The hardest thing about that upbringing for her is that her instincts toward our children are very much geared toward avoiding germs at all costs. Because that was how she was raised, that's the only way she really knows how to raise our kids. Fortunately, I'm there to get them really, really dirty.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com