Page 8 The dirt on our by Kay Harvey Knight Riddler Newspaper ST. PAUL, Minn. _ You'll eat a pound of dirt in your lifetime. Most of us have heard that bit of folk wisdom. But should we believe it? Nope. Now, the gritty truth: A pound is just the appetizer. "We actually eat more than a pound of dirt in our lifetime," says Susan Moores, a St. Paul dietitian and spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Associa tion. "Probably several pounds, depending on how long an individual lives." It's a tough thing to swal low. But the good news is dirt probably won't hurt you_depending on what you call dirt. Put it this way: Typical soil won't hurt you, soil and food experts say. Unless it's contaminated by things you really don't want to read about over your morning coffee. Dirt is hardly the lone substance invading our cu linary turf. It's virtually im- possible to get all the for- eign objects out of food on its way to processing, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. So, the FDA has settled on monitoring what it con siders acceptable levels of unappetizing offenders. Here's your official warning: Do not continue reading this story if you're eat- In processed cornmeal, for example, FDA guidelines allow one or more whole insects, 50 or more insect frag ments, two or more rodent hairs and one or more rodent excreta per 50 grams. In a can of peaches, 3 percent of the fruit can be moldy or wormy. And canned mushrooms will pass inspection if they have no more than an average 20 or more maggots per 100 grams. Surprised? So was Jay Bell, now a faculty member in the University of Minnesota's College of Agriculture, when he once worked at a job counting tomatoes before they were shipped. "It was my job to count the maggots, too," he says. "It was pretty amazing how high they'd let the number go." But bugs and worms won't hurt you, either, he says. In many cultures, people Crossword ACROSS 1 Stumble 5 Base of a mesa 10 Camelback 14 Crown of light 15 Book before Joel 16 Asian sea 17 Folk singer Burl 18 Webster illustration 19 Religious ceremony 20 Navigational instrument 22 Prolongation of a chord 24 Abdominal exercises 26 Expressed enjoyment 27 Purpose 30 Medication portion 31 Possess 32 Reaps a profit 34 Cromwell's nickname 39 Fairy-tale monster 40 Stinker 41 Peaceful 42 Run counter 44 Sao Brazil 45 Be in debt 46 Therefore 48 Sack 49 Brief argument 52 Training routines 54 Film preview 56 One of Rome's seven hills 60 Killer whale 61 English school subj. 63 Inactive 64 Plant anchor 65 Underground excavations 66 Thaw 67 Ultimatum word 68 Fidgety 69 Puts into words DOWN 1 The nearer one 2 Glowing review 3 Holm oak 4 Job stations 5 Japanese religion 6 Bruise eat insects. And in many packaged prod ucts, they are exposed to heat, which kills disease-producing organisms, dur ing processing. As a professor of soil science, Bell has the dirt on dirt, too. For those who don't make a distinction, he likes to establish the difference be tween soil and dirt. "Soil is a living body that occurs on the surface of the Earth," he explains. "It has to be able to support plant mate rial, and it usually has something grow- Behrend construction unearths a lot of dirt. How much of it will be consumed by humans? We'll never know! ing in it. Once you remove it from the surface of the Earth, it's dirt. Dirt is what you have under your fingernail." And on some of your vegetables when you pick them out at the supermarket produce counter. dirt no longer supports organic matter so has lost most of its nutritional value. That indicates it's low in calories, if that helps anyone to better accept it as part of the standard American diet. Some mothers have been known to tell their children not to complain about a little dirt on their veggies because dirt has minerals in it. But Bell doubts there's much nutritional value in dirt. "Whether it's got minerals in it or not, it probably just passes through the hu man body," he says. "I doubt the min erals are available in a way that's going to do you much good." Dirt is most likely to cross one's pal ate when eating root vegetables, espe cially those with crevices in them, such as potatoes and carrots, food experts say. It's also common in leafy greens, such as lettuce and spinach, which tend to collect blowing soil and retain it when © 2003 Tribune media Services, Inc. All rights reserved. Solutions 7 Buffoon 8 Coral creations 9 Top of the head 10 Dylan's Instrument 11 Bathsheba's husband 12 Dull finish 13 Argue a case 21 Lends a hand 23 Propels a shell 25 Close examiner 27 Intensely eager 28 "Othello" conspirator 29 Sorvino of "Mighty Aphrodite" 31 Single unit 33 Try to reach an agreement 35 Flightless birds 36 Dilettante's 44 Warsaw native 53 Loses weight 47 Expressionless 55 Thompson of 49 Put away for a "Wit" rainy day 57 Inkling 50 Flynn of films 58 Comrade 51 Tex-Mex order 59 Fish catchers 52 Pool outlet 62 T. Turner stn. painting 37 Ms. Fitzgerald 38 Polluted haze 40 Abandon truth 43 MP's quarry Unlike soil, which is full of nutrients, ern, h wall Ins/ .' , lA= elh 4,4444 r1id,...0114\11.1.1.-14tj Friday March 21, 2003 food they are pulled out of the ground. "Almost any fresh fruit or vegetable is going to catch some dirt," says Moores, the dietitian. "I made a tuna salad the other day, and the celery was just stuffed with mud." She did her best to wash the mud off, a practice she ad vocates. Soil and dirt aren't the only sub stances that get on food. "Dirt" on food is to most people "anything we're not planning on," says Donald Vesley of the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. He agrees that inert par ticles of dirt carrying nothing dangerous are probably irrelevant. "What's of most con cern would he pathogenic organisms, bacteria or vi ruses," he says. Pathogens, microorgan isms able to cause dis ease, are the real had guys. They can he present in raw food or make their way onto food during processing and handling. Publicized cases of food contamination in the manufacturing, restaurant and cruise-ship industries have brought the topic of food safety to the dinner table, says Vesley, a profes sor in the division of environmental and occupational health. He emphasizes the importance of hand washing before eating or prepar ing food; keeping kitchen tools sani tized; cooking hamburger, poultry, pork, fish and eggs thoroughly; and storing perishable foods properly. "Keep it hot, keep it cold, or don't keep it," he advises. But there are two schools of thought on the subject of the zealous washing of fresh fruits and vegetables. One is that ingesting normal nonfood substances can help the body build up immunities to some diseases. The other is that dirt on food can hurt you and you'd better scrub those potatoes with a vengeance. Bell, the soil science professor, says he doesn't wash his fresh produce par ticularly ambitiously. "My wife does, - he says. "She likes to have it as clean as possible. But I don't. I don't see a prob lem with it." Do not read this article! by Crazy Newspaper Face a not-so-serious contributing writer You think you have it hard be cause you're a minority, or a woman? Well, try being me for a day. I'm Crazy Newspaper Face. All I hear about these days is rac ism, sexism, heterosexism, age ism, and all those other isms. What about anti-newspaperism'? Yeah, I know you've never heard of that. You probably think there is no such thing. Well, I'm here to tell you how it is. Don't get me wrong, though. I'm not say ing that all those things mentioned above are insignificant. I'm just saying try being a man with a newspaper for a face. 1 was born on a cold January morning in New York City. The doctor couldn't even tell my mother whether I was a boy or a girl because he was too busy read ing the funnies on page SA of my face. The next few years of my life weren't all that bad. Yeah, sure, I would occasionally catch my dad staring at my forehead during dinner, but overall it wasn't that bad. Then the problems began. Some readers probably had night mares of showing up at school naked, but have you ever had one about having a newspaper for a Through the looking glass 131 Mike Pmgree, KRT Campus HMMMM, SHE LOOKS INTERESTING In an effort to fight prostitution, Oklahoma City officials started a television channel that broadcast the pictures of men caught cavorting with the local ladies 1 of the evening. Public shaming, it was thought, would keep potential clients 1 I away. The plan backfired. Because the hookers' mugshots were also aired, it enabled, l !would-he customers to identify them, facilitating future encounters. "It was almost a promotional thing for them," a spokesman said. "It wasn't a deterrent at' I all. - I WHERE'D ALL THESE COPS COME FROM? A man in Germany pulled his car over so he could snort cocaine, not realizing I that he parked in a space reserved for police cars outside the Innestadt police station. He was arrested. YOU'RE NOT EXACTLY WHAT I PICTURED An orthodox New York rabbi went on the Internet and arranged a date with a , 13-pear-old girl named Katie, who he met in a chat room called "I Love Older Men. - Katie - turned out to he a middle-aged police detective who arrested the rabbi' N 0 , Viva La France! DITHERED TWITS HELLO. Thank you for coiling CINOROM technical support.. If the binary scripting kernel fails during the initialization test. please press "E... CONGRATULATIONS!! You're on even bigger GEEK than all our combined support staff. Please stay on the line so that we may redirect all future technical inquiries to your attention Thank you for calling CINCIOM technical support. sera 4^ 3,qt,1 €42003 face? Try showing up on the first day of first grade with a face that reads, "President Reagan to give State of the Union Address. - I was so embarrassed Then, to top it all off, the teacher tried to pull my face off because she thought it was a joke. I spent the next six years of my life hearing things like, "Hey, let's go read Crazy Newspaper Face Boy's face," and, "What's hap pening in Iraq today?" And you thought you had it bad. Puberty was the worst. Most of you got pimples. I got typos. Not only did I have to walk around with a newspaper face, but the words were spelled wrong. Try dating with my face! "Hi, how are you doing? My name is Crazy Newspaper Face." Do you see my point? When I actually do find someone who can look past my face and see who I really am, I can't even kiss them with out smearing today's news all over their lips. I won't even go over what it is like trying to have sex with a face like mine. I've never had a relationship last for Karl Benacci, Features Editor as soon as he arrived for the tryst if you are experiencing a problem with our software, more than three days Try getting a job. I wanted to be an astronaut when I grew up, but all of my teachers said a boy like me could never be one. Then I wanted to be a fireman, but they all said my face ',would catch fire. The only place I can work is at a newsstand, and even there people ask me if they can read my face because were all out of the New York Times. So, all I'm trying to say is, be fore you start complaining about how bad you have it, just think what it would be like if you had a newspaper for a face. The Behrend Beacon by Sprengelmeyer & Davis If your problem involves a looping integer mapping error, , tir press T. *Mid - operand ranter pack reverts Innittently to Gs ichronized block vciion prohibitor, lase press "4_".
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers