# Did anyone see Wife Swap last night?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-anyone-see-wife-swap-last-night/393024
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [February 20, 2007, 10:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-anyone-see-wife-swap-last-night/393024 "2007-02-20T22:08:38Z")
**Posts on this page:** 9
**Page:** 3
### Author:  [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)
#### Post date: [February 21, 2007, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-anyone-see-wife-swap-last-night/393024/41 "2007-02-21T21:48:20Z")
[QUOTE=Sattua]
About raw chicken–my understanding is that the main risk is salmonella.
[/QUOTE]
They don’t believe in washing their hands. They could get anything from e Coli to tetanus when their hands go from manure to mouth. Relatively speaking the raw chicken was healthy. That aged beef, though, was greenish brown.
> [@](#):
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> I can’t get excited about eating raw milk or yogurt. People in America only stopped doing it on a regular basis what, fifty years ago?
More like 100 for most of us, which was around when our milk products stopped killing people.
> [@](#):
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> I have to say, on the news clip the house looked perfectly clean to me. Ugly, but clean. Was it markedly different during the show?
It was pretty nasty.
> [@](#):
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> The people also looked pretty normal to me–I was picturing dirty hippies living in an episode of How Clean Is Your House, but it wasn’t like that.
On the show they came across as ranging from pretty odd (Mom and Sis) to crazier than a shithouse rat (Dad and Junior), and since Mom welcomes our woodland friends to visit I expected a shithouse rat to show up for comparison. I’m another of the people who waited for Child Protective Service to barge in and stop the filming.
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### Author:  [@Wile\_E](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wile_E)
#### Post date: [February 21, 2007, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-anyone-see-wife-swap-last-night/393024/42 "2007-02-21T22:09:50Z")
I didn’t watch this but when I heard the ads for it I said to myself that the raw food people were only doing it to get on TV because how can someone _voluntarily_ live like that?
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### Author:  [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)
#### Post date: [February 21, 2007, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-anyone-see-wife-swap-last-night/393024/43 "2007-02-21T22:36:26Z")
I can’t… just… you _people_! [shudder] Oh, I wish I could speak! [cold glare] … but I won’t… [spasmodic twitch of lower lip] …'cause if I did… [furrowed brow] … my voice would be _loud_. Back off!! [reaching for sky] For god’s sake, back off!! [sobbing and shivering] Have you no decency!? [wailing and moaning] … God! I hate you people!! [rising from couch] … I’m gonna drink an _egg_!! [stomping away toward kitchen]
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### Author:  [@AuntiePam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AuntiePam)
#### Post date: [February 21, 2007, 10:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-anyone-see-wife-swap-last-night/393024/44 "2007-02-21T22:48:16Z")
[QUOTE=gwendee]
Those are just the same ignorant folks who ask upon learning I grew up in New York if I was ever mugged.
[/QUOTE]
::sheepish:: Guilty. Watching Ugly Betty, I’m agog that she walks alone to and from her subway stop. I was waiting for a mugger when she and Daniel were walking around downtown in the wee hours.
I’m equally sheepish to admit surprise when I learned that my neighbors (retired farmers) regularly take European vacations. “Can you watch the house? We’ll be in Ireland.” :eek:
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### Author:  [@Dijon\_Warlock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dijon_Warlock)
#### Post date: [February 23, 2007, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-anyone-see-wife-swap-last-night/393024/45 "2007-02-23T22:43:23Z")
[QUOTE=AuntiePam]
According to the WOI video clip, they live near Massena. Southwest, halfway between Des Moines and Omaha.
[/QUOTE]
Well, _that_ explains it!
I’m from SouthEAST Iowa: Where the Civilized People Live. “Almost Missouri,” maybe, but we’re more St. Louis than Kansas City. No _wonder_ they’re bizarre hicks!
Okay, I got nothin’…
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### Author:  [@Baldwin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baldwin)
#### Post date: [February 23, 2007, 10:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-anyone-see-wife-swap-last-night/393024/46 "2007-02-23T22:57:57Z")
I’m curious – did these people have their children vaccinated for anything? I wouldn’t be surprised if they don’t believe in vaccines.
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### Author:  [@Miss\_Purl\_McKnittington](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miss_Purl_McKnittington)
#### Post date: [February 24, 2007, 12:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-anyone-see-wife-swap-last-night/393024/47 "2007-02-24T00:42:53Z")
[QUOTE=AuntiePam]
I’m equally sheepish to admit surprise when I learned that my neighbors (retired farmers) regularly take European vacations. “Can you watch the house? We’ll be in Ireland.” :eek:
[/QUOTE]
Retired farmers? You’ve got to be lying about that part. Farmers don’t retire; they fade away.
> [@gwendee](#):
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> Maybe I’m just not as sensitive to it. I don’t see this in a proprortion greater than any other group is shown as a caricature. My impression is certainly not that all rural folks are any one way, any more than all urban dwellers are alike.
Maybe I’m just overly sensitive to it, but it gets a little tiring to see either uber-conservative, uber-religous people or white trash touted as typical Midwestern farmers when in my experience, farmers range from gay semi-vegetarians to college-educated, well-read local politicians to the stereotypical fire’n’brimstone white trash. There’s also this idea that people who live in rural areas aren’t acquainted with technology – like rural electrification never happened or country living hasn’t advanced past the Little House days.
I would say, on the whole, there’s more ignorance about what life is like in rural areas than there is about the city or the suburbs, and that’s simply by virtue of the fact that there’re more people in those areas. And there’s not much you can do about that.
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### Author:  [@Q.N.Jones](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.N.Jones)
#### Post date: [February 24, 2007, 2:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-anyone-see-wife-swap-last-night/393024/48 "2007-02-24T02:52:36Z")
There was an article about this in the _Des Moines Register_ the other day. Someone from social services said that what they saw was not enough to get them to intervene. They have received a lot of phone calls.
Iowa does require that kids who are homeschooled (meaning, not in regular school because they’re learning at home) turn in standardized test scores at the end of every school year. Although the kids are probably old enough not to be required to go to school at all–how old were they? I thought I heard 16 and 17. Iowa only requires that you attend until you are 16.
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### Author:  [@grayhairedmomma](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grayhairedmomma)
#### Post date: [February 24, 2007, 4:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-anyone-see-wife-swap-last-night/393024/49 "2007-02-24T04:16:37Z")
My question is (and I didn’t watch the show) how on earth did they get the kids to start eating raw meat and eggs? They only started this way of eating about a year ago correct?
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