Giulia Enders

bios means “for life.” Probiotics are edible living bacteria that can make us healthier. Pre bios means “before life.” Prebiotics are foodstuffs that pass undigested into the large intestine, where they feed our beneficial bacteria so that they thrive better than bad bacteria. Anti bios means “against life.” Antibiotics kill bacteria and are our saviors when we have picked up a pack of bad bacteria.

Cleanliness really was thought to be next (in importance) to godliness; people craved a sense of order in a life full of chaos. The anthropologist Mary Douglas summed this up in her book Purity and Danger with the phrase, “Dirt is matter out of place.”

This cannot be a good kind of cleanliness. The higher the hygiene standards in a country, the higher that nation’s incidence of allergies and autoimmune diseases. The more sterile a household is, the more its members will suffer from allergies and autoimmune diseases.