Your immune system is more reliable than you think

My housemate (landlady, actually) thinks I have a stomach of cast iron. Here are some of the things it can do:

1. I went to Nariel Creek Folk Festival during the last Christmas & New Year holidays, and existed solely on tinned food, bread, fruit, etc. It was really hot at that time of year and the interior of the car often got quite hot. As is to be expected, the bread turned moldy with about 4 or 5 different varieties of fungi. The patches of mold were quite large and furry. I deliberately ate the moldy bread, just to see if my body could handle it. The bread tasted sickly-sweet. I gagged several times while trying to force the stuff down and washed it down with unfiltered water from the creek.
2. I made some chicken wraps using roast chicken on a thursday night before the Jane Austen Festival, fearing that there might not be enough food containing protein provided at the festival. As it turned out, the event was more than adequately catered for, unlike in previous years. The wraps sat in the car for a whole week, unrefrigerated, until I ate them the friday night (of the week after the festival) after working out at the gym. The wraps were visibly moldy, and smelled and tasted as much. It was quite an effort trying to get them down.
3. I've eaten roast chicken that had been left on the counter unrefrigerated for more than a week.
4. I've drunk spoiled milk on several occasions.
5. I have a packet of pasta with seasoning sachet that's been "expired" for more than 10 years. I plan to consume it at some point in the future.
6. I've eaten various curries that had gone sour, simply because there was a lot of it and I didn't want to refrigerate them.
7. I defrosted some chicken thighs and cooked half of it. The other half sat in the refrigerator (not the freezer) for about 1/2 weeks. I had forgotten about it, and my housemate complained that the fridge had started to smell. Upon finding the chicken there, I proceeded to cook it in a curry. The chicken had visibly started to decompose, and it had a rather bad smell. The resulting curry also spent some time outside a refrigerator and the last of it went sour. Still, I ate every bit of it.

Now I believe that I'm not fundamentally different from anyone else, so it must be that the average person's immune system is actually capable of feats like the above. For example, many poor people scavenge for food in dumpsters. We are led to believe that our immune systems need all the outside help they can get. Why is this? Perhaps some industries depend on our ignorance:

1. Would refrigerator manufacturers sell as many refrigerators if people knew that food can last quite a long time at room temperature?
2. Would the food industry sell as much food if people knew that food that's past the expiration date is mostly still safe to eat?
3. Would food-safety related government departments still have as much work to do and thus get as much funding if people knew that food-safety is largely a non-issue?
4. Would pharmaceutical companies sell as many drugs if people knew about the "hygiene hypothesis"?

It is important to realize how our immune systems work. It learns about new bugs when we ingest small quantities of them. Then when faced with subsequent invasions of these bugs, the immune system is quick to respond and eliminates them. What I've done is to deliberately introduce new pathogens to my immune system, in a way immunizing myself from them. The immune system is very effective at eliminating biological threats in this way.

Not all threats to the human body are biological in nature. Many are chemical in origin. Some bugs that infect food produce toxic chemicals that causes problems in our bodies that our immune systems can't do anything about. Our main defenders against these chemical threats are our kidneys. They filters out most toxic chemicals from the blood, and excrete them into the urine. However I don't think the kidneys "learn" to break down new chemical toxins, but still they are capable of eliminating most chemical threats.

Ironically, it is those who are the most diligent about food-safety who suffer most of the food poisonings which are often life-threatening. I have made a deliberate choice and acted accordingly to protect myself from food poisonings by deliberately consuming food that's not fit to be eaten.

On a related note, it is truly staggering to know just how much food goes to waste in more developed countries. When I was at Woolworths supermarket choosing the previously mentioned roast chicken (for the wraps), I noticed that a worker had come and was waiting close by with an open bin. I realized then what was about to happen. I chose two roast chickens and as I was walking away, I muttered "Shame... that's a real shame!" while he proceeded to throw the 4 or 5 remaining chickens into the bin.

The cost of the thrown-away chickens is recouped from the sale of the sold chickens. What if they reduced the price of the chickens in the first place? Perhaps then more chickens would be sold, and there would be less waste.