Kidult Query 2: What Do People Who Suffer from Mysophobia Eat? (On Food and Microbes)

There have been a number of Korean dramas that featured characters suffering from mysophobia or the morbid fear of filth and being contaminated with it. Clean With Passion for Now and I’m Not a Robot both heavily focused on the characters’ fear of getting dirty.

Some dramas may have featured OCD or Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, but they still highlighted the characters’ obsession with cleanliness. Love with Flaws featured Kang Woo (Ahn Jae Hyun) who excessively cleaned his shoes and shirt. In It’s Okay, It’s Love, Jang Jae Yeol (Jo In Sung) frowned upon the mess others made when he first moved in and ensured that his own room was well-organized and clean. Also, his mother had this intense habit of keeping everything clean in her house. True Beauty’s Lee Soo Ho (Cha Eun Wo) demanded for the female lead to throw away his uniform when she soiled it the first time. The second time, he was almost compelled to throw a brand new uniform into a bin as if it was a habit, but he stopped himself because he was already starting to have feelings for the female lead. He also kept his house spic and span.

Mysophobic people are obsessed with cleanliness because they want to get rid of bacteria and viruses. They tend to feel the compulsion or urge to constantly wash their hands or spray sanitizers on places where they think microbes are present. On the other hand people who have OCD are obsessed with cleaning because they feel the need to do things repetitively or the need to see things in order. These two can be comorbid with each other because washing hands for a mysophobic is an urge that will classify it as an Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and those with OCD can have a mild case of mysophobia because they can have the tendency to feel anxious when they see things dusty or unclean. But in DSM V or the fifth upgraded version of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, mysophobia is classified under anxiety disorders which is a different group compared to obsessive-compulsive and related disorders.

Because of these dramas, in the midst of this pandemic, I thought of people suffering from mysophobia and wondered how they survive in their day- to-day living. It was featured in the dramas I’m Not a Robot and Clean with Passion for Now, that people who suffered from the disease were able to survive because they were rich enough to create a unique living condition for themselves.

I actually have conflicting thoughts about how they are faring right now. One, maybe they became more anxious because the world finally realized how dangerous microbes are. Two, they probably felt a little relief because people who stared at them weirdly before for being too sensitive about filth and germs can finally relate to what they were feeling . Three, maybe there’s a percentage of mysophobics who felt a little safer now, which was ironic because it’s pandemic; they’re not supposed to feel safe. On my defense, I think some finally felt safer because everybody was obliged to be distant from each other and each establishment people go to incorporated the process of disinfecting upon entering or exiting the place.

I was also intrigued about what mysophobic people (those who have the most severe cases) eat. Nowadays, for food to taste as good as it should, one has to put in a variety of ingredients. So, where do they get their ingredients? It would be too farfetched to say that they had to make everything on their own just to make sure that what they eat was free of dirt and germs.

There were different ways of making food ingredients and things like soy sauce, wine, cheese, and mayonnaise achieved their final tastes and appearances with the help of microbes, most especially good and edible microbes.

But if a person is mysophobic, there is no such thing as “good” bacteria because they believe that everything dirty have microbes that will “harm” them. So, the only thing they have to do now is to adjust their palates.

But, what if even the most staple of all ingredients is cannot be trusted?

Most of the salts used for cooking were obtained from sea water or other bodies of water that had high salt content. Other salts were also mined. But regardless of the process, the fact was that, most salts came from bodies of water where people throw their trash into.

One of my professors back in college said that salt nowadays have plastic in them and that we were all eating the plastic we carelessly threw everywhere. I believe that statement wholeheartedly even without evidence, because some plastic wastes that were carried into the ocean from a long time ago may have already been dissolved together with the ocean water. And we are adding more wastes into it.

Even if some people would try to defend themselves by saying that they do not throw their garbage on bodies of water, what about when it floods? Or when strong winds blow? So, ever thought of mindlessly throwing your garbage anywhere?

Well, good luck to us and the future trash eaters.