Microorganisms
Food Chain Radio Show #1032
Michael Olson, Author & Urban Farming Agriculturalist
The Bugs Within – Microorganisms
Guests: David Montgomery and Anne Bikle Authors, The Hidden Half of Nature
Are we what we eat, or are we what they eat?
Michael Olson Food Chain Radio: The Bugs Within – with David Montgomery and Anne Bikle Authors, The Hidden Half of Nature
I am thinking, with no small amount of mirth, of how Howard Hughes, the late billionaire germ-o-phobe, would have reacted had he learned of the one hundred trillion microorganisms that lived within his body!
Then again, we all are germ-o-phobes to one extent or another, are we not? Well, good luck to us all, because the environment in which we live, and the bodies within which we live, are awash in a sea of microorganisms.
In our body they outnumber our own cells on the order of ten to one. Yes, the little bugs living within us outnumber us 10 to 1. And the little bugs talk to each other, and buy stuff from each other, and sell stuff to each other. And the stuff of their commerce is the stuff of our life. Without their commerce, we and all of life on earth, would be in big, big trouble.
Getting back to our germ-o-phobia, perhaps we should reconsider our fear of microorganisms, and our penchant for destroying them whenever and wherever we find them. This realization leads us to ask…
Leave a comment below: Are we what we eat, or are we what they eat?
Tune in here, for the syndicated Food Chain Radio Show #1032 October 24, 2015 Saturday 9AM Pacific
We are what they eat. The microbes do all the work. Our role (and the role of plants and animals) is to provide the optimal environment for the microbes to do their work. The bad guys (pathogens) get all the press, but they are in the minority in nature. Pathogen outbreaks are more common because our industrial food production system creates the optimal environment for pathogens.