The Irony of Probiotics
There’s a multimillion dollar industry around cleaning everyday surfaces so that we don’t pick up bacteria off of them.
Why? Because bacteria are bad. Sure, there are supposedly good ones and bad ones. But how is it that every single one that exists on surfaces like restaurant tables and elevator buttons happens to be evil?
Anyway.
There’s a new health craze now that basically goes like this:
Pay us $50 and you can ingest—directly into your body—billions of bacteria at a time.
For health.
The one I just purchased from Whole Foods Paycheck has something like 80 billion bacteria, which belong to 33 different individual strains.
Oh, and you’re supposed to keep them cool so they don’t die. Because then they won’t help you as much.
Yep.
So that’s what I’m doing. I’m consuming billions of bacteria in hopes that it’ll serve as my new vitamin as well as restore balance to the force.
TL;DR: Make sure there’s not a single bacteria on your hand, because it might kill you. But go to the store and buy billions of them so you can put them in your belly.
Notes
I actually do get the concept. We’ve more bacteria in our bodies (trillions) than we have our own cells, and it’s important to keep a balanced set of them to maximize health. But still. Seems like it could just go wrong somehow and kill you in five minutes.