Unfortunately, way too many people buy into the anti-germ hysteria promulgated by the anti-bacterial wipe and spray companies. The notion that a simple handshake might be “the most unhygienic custom you can think of” is simply bizarre.
This thread is just plain weird: it seems that practically any form of contact with any item that has ever been in contact with any other human being is now considered weird and disgusting. Sharing food? The horror! Get over yourselves, snowflakes.
I dunno about that . . . as far as spreading illness, shaking hands is pretty far up the ladder, and it’s one of the most common customs in the west. I’ve heard studies (on NPR, I think, among other places) where people will test doorknobs, shoe-bottoms, floors, public toilet seats, telephones, handrails, etc., and the palm of the hand always ends up being the dirtiest or one of the dirtiest places. How many customs can you think of that we practice every single day, sometimes several times, that are so dirty they make the inclusion of handshakes seem “bizarre”? I mean . . . letting someone cough or sneeze in your face is worse I’m sure, and so would be performing analingus on a hooker with bleeding hemroids, but those aren’t customs as far as I know. There’s something to be said for handshakes just based on how common they are • the likelihood of them actually making you sick.
Thanks, anu-la1979. Very interesting. And very foreign. I find it fascinating how people in really different cultures live–thanks for taking the time to get and relay the info.
That’s actually rather brilliant, and not un-hygenic at all, now that we have the details.
So it’s been heated to a sanitary temperature and is used for its abrasive properties. Brilliant!
So they’re making sterile, shelf-stable Insta-Lye, just add water. Again, brilliant! (If a little tough on the hands. Madge would not approve.)
So it’s a floor sealer, not a cleaner. And spread in a thin layer, exposed to the air, any coliforms in there will be dead within hours. As long as the kids are kept off the floor until dry, it’s clean as floorwax. Brilliant!
And, of course, burning also kills coliform bacteria. Brilliant!
Tell your dad I think he’s awesome, and his people…uh…brilliant!
No problem, guys. From an anthopological perspective, the manner in which they historically used the cow (from labour animal to using nearly every byproduct for some household purpose) is probably why they created the mythology they did around it (in terms of the Hindu aversion to beef). My father claims that the curren theory in India is that the ancients did notice that droughts occurred in a fairly regular cycle in India, so they threw up the religious prohibition around the cow to incentivize not eating it during those troughs in the cycle. Of course, this was prior to the discovery of chemical fertilizers but old customs die hard.
The thing is that India is a really big place and there’s no doubt in my mind that there’s some sect using cow crap for some truly disgusting purpose-but I think if you’re thinking about the average rural poor my parents’ experience is probably standard.
cowdung is used for the exact same architectural uses in traditional African architecture.
I believe that those people with money stored in their mouth weren’t in very good health to begin with 
Cow dung as toothpaste? That wasn’t on my list before…
Those tribes that periodically dig up the corpses of their ancestors to… I dunno, hang out with them?
I agree that there seems to be a lot of over-reaction to human-to-human contact. For one thing, humans–actually, just about all animals–naturally have thousands of bacteria strains throughout and on the surface of their bodies. These bacteria usually serve useful purposes, and they’re unhygienic only if a person has some kind of bacteria-caused illness. But most illnesses that pass from one human to another are viruses. There’s nothing particularly unhygienic in a healthy human’s mouth.
We have to assume that if you think sharing food is disgusting, then you never engage in kissing. Never. You’re on a date and the other person gets especially amorous, and you say, “EEEEEEwwwwwwww, I’m not going to kiss you! That’s unhygienic!” What you’re essentially saying is that you think the other person has some kind of disease or illness.
Secondly, the human body has a wonderfully, amazingly effective defense system against unfamiliar microbes. If I get a cold, my body engages in a whole battery of defenses that keep it at bay. And if I get influenza, my body will heat itself in order to prevent the virus from replicating. And once my body has defeated an “unfriendly” bacteria or virus, it can usually easily fight it off in the future.
It’s true that many viruses are transmitted by hand-to-hand contact, but if it were as “dirty” as you say, the whole society would be sick in bed. Even if hand-shaking were eliminated, people would still be getting sick, because we need to use our hands for so many other things–door knobs, keyboards, buttons on the office copy machine–and then we bring our hands to our facial orifices out of habit. If we could stop doing that, then shaking hands would never be a problem at all. In fact, the benefit of the face masks that people are wearing now because of the H1D1 flu is mostly because it prevents people from touching their mouth with their hand, not because it “filters out” spore in the air.
No, we aren’t sick in bed all the time because we have immune systems. They’re not bulletproof, though.
Don’t they use the other end of the chopsticks to transfer the food from the communal bowl to their individual little rice bowls?
In the type of circumstances we’re talking about, there’s a floor, and maybe some walls. You sit, eat, and sleep on the floor. So the floor is meticulously cleaned regularly, especially after meals. In a place with walls, the walls will also be washed after meals.
Those Indians using cow dung to clean? They will not touch food that has been on someone else’s plate.
It’s carbon at that point-and I looked up what activated carbon is. That shit can be used to filter gas.
I think you’re talking about the Inca in terms of hanging out with dead ancestors.
I have got to say-man, the West sure likes to talk a big deal about living green but when faced with it they go all squirrelly!
“That shit” being used literally here, for once.
Another thing-my father says that India’s carbon footprint would be infinitely higher if it weren’t for the use of gober gas (fermented cow dung natural gas). Apparently they guesstimate upwards of 30%. Also, apparently the building and maintenance of gober gas tanks is very cheap. Why the f*ck don’t we do that here? He said when he was at IIT he volunteered on a project to convert a medium large farm to run entirely on gober gas-that the dude did it with 15 cows.
Why don’t we just throw tanks under feedlots and generate natural gas that way?
Anaerobic digestors are being put up next to dairies and other CAFOs. In Ottawa County, in west MI, there is more manure than field to spread it, so they don’t have much choice. Other farmers are realizing that they could use the money (from proceeds and grants), especially as many have to upgrade their manure storage facilities anyway.
Thanks to the excellent information from anu-la1979, we’ve learnt that it’s NOT *fresh *cow dung, but baked (and therefore probably pretty well sterilized and deodorized).
This takes a lot, but not all of the ick factor out if it for me.
And yes, we could learn a lot from the eco-friendly practices of developing countries.
It’s not the Inca – it’s still practiced today. I’m thinking somewhere North African.
Oh yeah, and I’ve got a vasectomy and never had kids. I consider that my contribution to the future of the planet. BTW, I’m in the market for a gas-powered toaster. 
IIRC, there are a couple of project to do that in Wisconsin right now. A little more complicated than throwing a couple tanks under feedlots, but not much.
Ewww!