Eating Dirt

My friend Homirah just posted this link on Facebook about how we humans eat so little dirt these days - and how this could be related to the rise in our absolute inability to be friends with organisms and bacterias - how we all are starting to have these ungodly allergies and immune disorders. If you think about it, it makes perfect sense. Unless we buy organic right from the farmer, our produce has practically been disinfected by the time it reaches our mouths. (not to mention all the chemicals and pesticides we are exposed to........)

When I was a kid, my dad always planted a huge garden. He had 9 mouths to feed, and a huge back yard. He raised rabbits and pigeons, and chickens for food - and this manure was used to amend the soil every year. There were no chemicals or fancy gardening implements that I can remember. We ate the peas that grew under the rabbit cages from the pigeon food that fell under the hutches - right straight out of the manure.
I ate bugs and poo and  I have relatively fewer allergies than most of my friends, it seems.

So while, this 21st century woman no longer is willing to eat a vegetable grown straight from poo - ok: I do eat mushrooms --  I don't mind brushing off a little dirt and eating something right out the ground. As long as it is fairly safe dirt. No radiation or horrible toxins that we know of.