There have been reports of YouTubers I watch getting sick after eating food in third world countries. However, these countries are also home to a large number of people who do not get sick from eating the same food. I think this suggests that the locals may have developed stronger immune systems. What do you think?
Don’t tell anyone, but we third worlders convert bacteria into energy, neutralising them. That’s how we survive restaurant potato-mayo salad, and street hot dogs!*
OK, I’m joking with the above. Serious now: if there’s any quantitative difference on the immunity system between people living in poorer conditions, related to food poisoning and similar, I’d expect it to be a smaller component. Instead what I expect the most is a qualitative difference, between people living in different areas: you’re more used to the strains of bacteria around your home, than the ones elsewhere, so when you’re travelling you have a higher chance to get some stupid food poisoning.
If my reasoning is correct you should see something similar happening with travellers in general, even if they stick to places with a similar economic status as their homeland.
*or street hot dogs with potato-mayo salad. Yes, they’re a thing in my city - that’s why we call those street hot dogs something loosely translatable as “big rotten”. (I once got food poisoning from one of those. It was not fun.)
I live in a third world country. What you don’t see in those YouTube videos is how common it is for the locals to contracts sanitary-related diseases such as typhoid fever, hepatitis A, ascaris worms, diarrhea, etc. A large proportion of people I know (including myself) have contacted typhoid fever at some point in their live. Those street food resistance is earned by getting sick a lot when they’re young.
When I travel abroad I try to drink bottled water from my home country for the first three days, after that I I drink the native stuff. A frequent traveler taught me this trick and it seems (yes I know anecdotal) to work.
Really not an expert on this stuff but I imagine there are just different bacteria in the water and that is what people are reacting to.
There was an episode of vsauce or veritasium or cgpgrey several years ago that kind of talked about this a little bit. Basically, inside and outside of us, alongside covering all of our things and everything we touch and are around and other people, are all part of an extended network of poop particles and bacteria.
You get sick when new things get past your exterior & interior poop network of bacterial defenses. Same for anyone, anywhere. It’s all just how much, how fast, and how far and how new, the new bacteria and viruses get. If it gets too far, too fast, we might die.
But, people are disgusting and COVERED IN POOP BACTERIA AND VIRUSES and so we’re all fairly familiar with everything, and nothing is too different.
COVID-19, for example, was very different and spread in large amounts very quickly, I believe it’s why it’s called a “novel” virus. It was different enough that it just waltzed past all our defenses and killed millions of people. And then, it mutated enough, and quickly enough, that when it came back to us with the new form, our immune systems were like “damn this one virus came in here and caused a ton of damage, but for some reason we don’t know exactly what it looks like. Are you that virus or it’s relative?” And the mutation was like, “uhhh, no?” And the security guard/immune system was all, “okay, come on through.” And it would get us sick again.
Biology is weird and epidemiology is incredibly difficult when half the population is fucking homeschooled and thinks horse dewormer helps this type of thing or that it’s fake or something.
The survivors might.
