Naked Science Forum
Life Sciences => Physiology & Medicine => Topic started by: Airthumbs on 14/04/2011 10:26:52
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There is a guy who lives in my Hotel, yesterday he got taken away in an ambulance.
Upon entering his room, which was very difficult, what I saw was beyond words!
Anyway, after emptying half a canister of fly spray to try and kill the thousands of flies, today I will be cleaning up his room.
Somehow he has survived by eating food out of bins for the last few years and amazingly does not seem to have been adversely effected by this. Has he just been lucky or does he have a stomach of steel?
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As I understand it the main danger from eating off food is not the bacteria but the toxins they produce, I suppose one could build up a tolerance for them. The better plan would be getting to the food pretty quickly after it's been thrown out I think.
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The bacteria vs toxins argument depends on which bacteria and which toxin. For example, with Clostridium botulinum you'd be worried about the toxin. However, with Salmonella species they're invasive and it's damage caused by the bacteria themselves that causes the damage.
Symptomatically, you can usually tell the difference by time of onset - toxins take a couple of hours to show their effects while it can take 24-28 hours for an infection to be established.
In theory, eating filth may increase your chance of fighting off something, should your immune system see it again. However, it's pretty unlikley that you've got anything that nasty in your bins (if you have, I'd consider phoning someone who knows what they're doing with it!) and most enteric pathogens are virulent enough that environmental exposure like that probably doesn't give you sufficient immune memory...
As for tolerance to toxins, it's possible but it depends on the toxin and how it gets in to the host. Some are nasty enough that you just don't. Botulinum toxin is a good example.
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There is a guy who lives in my Hotel, yesterday he got taken away in an ambulance.
Somehow he has survived by eating food out of bins for the last few years and amazingly does not seem to have been adversely effected by this.
Contradiction in terms (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contradiction_in_terms) [:)]
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He was taken away for psychiatric reasons. Sorry I did not make that clear. [:-X]
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Somehow he has survived by eating food out of bins for the last few years and amazingly does not seem to have been adversely effected by this. Has he just been lucky or does he have a stomach of steel?
Apparently some of the binned food from supermarkets is edible ...
Many freegans get free food by pulling it out of the trash, a practice commonly nicknamed 'dumpster diving' in North America and 'skipping' or 'bin diving' in the UK, as well as 'bin raiding.' Retail suppliers of food such as supermarkets, grocery stores, and restaurants routinely throw away food in perfectly good condition, often because it is approaching its sell-by date
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeganism#Food_discarded_by_retailers