Food Microbiology Quotes

Since the idea of packaging is to protect food from bacteria,” Andrady observes, “wrapping leftovers in plastic that encourages microbes to eat it may not be the smartest thing to do.” But even if it worked, or even if humans were gone and never produced another nurdle, all the plastic already produced would remain— how long? “Egyptian pyramids have preserved corn, seeds, and even human parts such as hair because they were sealed away from sunlight with little oxygen or moisture,” says Andrady, a mild, precise man with a broad face and a clipped, persuasively reasonable voice. “Our waste dumps are somewhat like that. Plastic buried where there’s little water, sun, or oxygen will stay intact a long time. That is also true if it is sunk in the ocean, covered with sediment. At the bottom of the sea, there’s no oxygen, and it’s very cold.” He gives a clipped little laugh. “Of course,” he adds, “we don’t know much about microbiology at those depths. Possibly anaerobic organisms there can biodegrade it. It’s not inconceivable. But no one’s taken a submersible down to check. Based on our observations, it’s unlikely. So we expect much-slower degradation at the sea bottom. Many times longer. Even an order of magnitude longer.” An order of magnitude—that’s 10 times—longer than what? One thousand years? Ten thousand?

It may be a shock to the ego, but you are not alone in your body, and your microbiota is right now making plans for your future. By manipulating your cravings and mood, it gains control over your behavior.

When everything is running smoothly, you pay no attention to your gut. Like your heart or your liver, it’s best if these things are on autopilot. Your conscious mind is too busy looking for your keys to be trusted with running these critical organs.

Only one percent of your genes are human, and those genes are fairly stable, but your microbial genes—the other 99 percent—are in constant flux. Measured by your genes, you’re a different creature each and every morning.

If microbes are controlling the brain, then microbes are controlling everything.

Microbes surround us and suffuse us. We are seriously outnumbered. A single bacterium, given enough to eat, could multiply until its brethren reached the mass of the Earth in just two days. That’s a big clue to their superpower: They are excellent at reproduction.

Microbes can mutate every 20 minutes, while humans try to counterpunch with genetic evolutionary updates every 10,000 years or so. They are genetic dynamos, running circles around us.

The community of microbes living in your gut—your so-called microbiota—is like another organ of your body. It’s a seething alien living inside of you, fermenting your food and jealously protecting you against interlopers. It’s a pretty unusual organ by any measure, but even more so in that its composition changes with every meal.

Finally, the Industrial Revolution coincided with a transformation of science from a pleasant but nonessential branch of philosophy into a vibrant profession that helped people make money. Many heroes of the early Industrial Revolution were chemists and engineers, often amateurs such as Michael Faraday and James Watt who lacked formal degrees or academic appointments. Like many young Victorians excited by the winds of change, Charles Darwin and his elder brother Erasmus dreamed as boys of becoming chemists.8 Other fields of science, such as biology and medicine, also made profound contributions to the Industrial Revolution, often by promoting public health. Louis Pasteur began his career as a chemist working on the structure of tartaric acid, which was used in wine production. But in the process of studying fermentation he discovered microbes, invented methods to sterilize food, and created the first vaccines. Without Pasteur and other pioneers in microbiology and public health, the Industrial Revolution would not have progressed so far and so fast. In short, the Industrial Revolution was actually a combination of technological, economic, scientific, and social transformations that rapidly and radically altered the course of history and reconfigured the face of the planet in less than ten generations—a true blink of an eye by the standards of evolutionary time. Over

Bacteria are so small they need to stick to things or they will wash away; to attach themselves, they produce a slime, the secondary result of which is that individual soil particles are bound together. [...] Fungal hyphae, too, travel through soil, sticking to them and binding them together, thread-like, into aggregates. [...] The soil food web, then, in addition to providing nutrients to roots in the rhizosphere, also helps create soil structure: the activities of its members bind soil particles together even as they provide for the passage of air and water through the soil. [...] The nets or webs fungi form around roots act as physical barriers to invasion and protect plants from pathogenic fungi and bacteria. Bacteria coat surfaces so thoroughly, there is no room for others to attach themselves. If something impacts these fungi or bacteria and their numbers drop or they disappear, the plant can easily be attacked.

Few realize that a great deal of the energy that results from photosyntheisis in the leaves is actually used by plants to produce chemicals they secrete through their roots. These secretions are known as exudates. [...] Root exudates are in the form of carbohydrates (including sugars) and proteins. Amazingly, their presence wakes up, attracts and grows specific beneficial bacteria and fungi living in the soil that subsist on these exudates and the cellular material sloughed off as the plant's root tips grow. [...] During different times of the growing season, populations of rhizosphere bacteria and fungi wax and wane, depending on the nutrient needs of the plant and the exudates it produces. [...] Plants produce exudates that attract fungi and bacteria (and, ultimately, nematodes and protozoa); their survival depends on the interplay between these microbes. It is a completely natural system, the very same one that has fueled plants since they evolved. Soil life produces the nutrients needed for plant life, and plants initiate and fuel the cycle by producing exudates.

Without this [Soil Food Web system of bacteria, fungi etc], most important nutrients would drain from soil. Instead, they are retained in the bodies of soil life. Here is the gardener's truth: when you apply a chemical fertilizer, a tiny bit hits the rhizosphere, where it is absorbed, but most of it continues to drain through soil until it hits the water table. Not so with the nutrients locked up inside soil organisms, a state known as immobilization; these nutrients are eventually released as wastes, or mineralized.

have striking memories of the first microbiology class I took. The instructor asked me and my classmates to place our hands on the agar gel in petri dishes that had been placed on our lab benches. A week later we returned to the lab to find our petri dishes contained gnarly black, yellow, white, and green furry monstrosities growing in the precise shape of our hands. That petri dish was easily the most vivid demonstration of the importance of hand washing I’ve ever seen. We