When first reading this prompt, a choice that I make almost every week immediately popped into my head—to fast food or not to fast food? The most obvious point of discussion would be the lack of nutritional value in our popular drive-thru/delivery choices. Failing to provide much nutritional benefit to the one consuming it, I would not expect it give much nourishment to our commensal gut bacteria either, which would only hamper their ability to survive and thrive.
However, something that I have been considering as I become more microbially aware, is what invisible pathogenic microbes could be hitching a ride from an unsanitary food facility to a comfortable new home in my metabolic organ, via my burrito. Accidental consumption of an undesirable bacterial strain could certainly disrupt the balanced microbiome (dysbiosis) and displace the commensal microorganisms dwelling there. Though the outcome is unintentional, our inability to trust how our food is being prepared and handled before it reaches us could yield potentially fatal consequences and any lapse in judgement made by the food handler could contribute to their likelihood.
A popular topic these days, choosing to receive treatment by antibiotics could have the desired result with unintended fallout. At the very least, the antibiotics will eradicate the infection, but at the expense of preexisting microflora that were either beneficial or not harmful. With so much real estate becoming available, the door is left open for unfamiliar and potentially pathogenic microorganisms to fill in those vacancies, leaving the host at risk for even more health problems.
On the other hand, the introduction of antibiotics could lead to a far worse outcome that has become a rather large concern recently: bacterial acquisition of antibiotic immunity. If the patient chose to discontinue treatment, or if the treatment were to fail altogether, the invasive bacteria have the chance to increase their tolerance against our first line of defense. Furthermore, this advancement isn’t a personal hurdle presented to each bacterium—once earned, bacteria can spread their resistance to others via horizontal gene transfer or binary fission and selection (“vertical”). Once resistant, the offending bacteria will be able to dominate the microbiome and the host much more easily.
