I think I keep a rather tidy kitchen, not perfect but clean and neat. The other day as I flipped through channels I stopped on the “Kitchen Detectives.” This show picks a rather horrendous kitchen to go into and swab, swipe, pick through and take samples of leftovers and grime. Allof these kitchens make mine look like it had been sterilized.
They can end up replacing the floors and counter tops, bleaching, painting and cleaning all surfaces and even replacing the fridge. The germs they find in these kitchens makes you want to scrub your kitchen from top to bottom on a weekly basis. They were having a fit about plastic bags from grocery stores. Bags are filled and come in contact with residue from meat packages in the store itself. They then travel in your trunk where you have carried everything from luggage to garden products. Sometimes you set them on the ground, street, driveway while closing the trunk and then the bags land on your kitchen counter, transferring all of the germs to a place you prepare food.
I was a bit mortified when I saw this, although after the trip to the store Friday night, we put the purchases on the counter. My counter does get wiped frequently, it is a dark granite look and although it doesn’t show dirt, that’s the good news, you can feel it when you set your hand on it, that’s the bad news. I am not sure I attacked it with soap and water after the packages Friday though.
A couple of months ago there was a big to-do over the germs on your cell phone being worse than the germs on your toilet seat. I’m not sure about anyone else but I tend to refrain from licking my cell phone and my toilet seat. We have gone germ insane.
As I watched the detectives do their thing in the kitchen I wondered what they would have found in my great grandmothers kitchen and the ancestors before. Zinc covered counter tops did tend to poison food. I still wonder about aluminum pans and what metal transfer they did. Food was brought in from the garden and rinsed, not disinfected, although they didn’t use the toxic chemicals we are no so used to. Milk wasn’t pasteurized and tap water did not have chlorine in it. I am sure dirt blew in under the door across the floor. Kitchen tables were used for everything that needed a large flat surface; heaven only knows what landed on them.
How in the world did they ever survive? Although we don’t die from the same types of things, some of the things that do kill us have gotten stronger than the drugs we currently have. Has any of this had to do with our disinfected life style? Have our bodies become wimps?