This morning I bought one of those breads: a bit like a donut, a bit like a sel, from my local shop. The girl behind the counter wrapped it up in a bit of old news­paper and I happily brought it home and ate it with tea. Rewind a couple of months when I was helping out in a friend’s café in the UK. Before I could do that I had to undergo an online health and hygiene course. This is a basic requirement for anyone handling food in the UK. Strict protocol had to be adhered to even though it was only coffee, tea, and cakes, no raw food and no hot food.

I can’t help thinking about the paradox here. One country obsessed with cleanliness and one with a much more laid back attitude to the whole thing! Let’s look at the West’s obsession with hygiene. Growing up, although I certainly had to wash my hands before eating, parents in those days were not worried if chil­dren played in earthworm-infested soil, or muddy puddles.

Today I notice parents in the West are much more conscious of poten­tial hazards—not allowing small chil­dren to dig in mud, wiping down baby high chairs with specially designed disinfecting wet wipes, and preventing kids from sitting on ‘dirty’ floors.

Some have even gone as far as to take on the health services by not vaccinating their children against things like chicken pox, measles and other childhood illnesses. All in the name of ‘health’. (And yes, there are arguments for both sides and sta­tistics can always be twisted to suit any argument.) Meantime in Nepal, particularly in the countryside, chil­dren look, and are, positively cov­ered in muck of many kinds. No one seems unnecessarily worried. We can argue that this is because there is little choice. But remember, I was brought up in the UK before everything went super clean. There was a choice: my parents could have ensured when I was playing it was done in a ‘hygienic’ environment. They did not. In those days it didn’t seem to matter so much, and any­way we children were having fun!

Going back to food, I wonder why I can easily accept a newspa­per-wrapped donut from my local store, handled by the shopkeeper after she had handled my earthy potatoes, and probably a lot of grub­by money earlier, but would proba­bly balk if the waiter in an upscale restaurant touches a similar food item while putting it on my plate. To get a tiny stone in one’s bhat in a highway eatery is acceptable but a hair in one’s soup in a mid-class restaurant would have us complain­ing to the manager. Or would it?

Last year, when eating with a Nepali friend in Cambodia, he found a piece of glass in his rice. Yes, we complained, yes, the manager was called and he apologised, replacing the dish with a plate of pasta. But no, we didn’t create a huge fuss. In fact we sympathized with him that most likely the rice supplier was cheating on the weight of the sack of uncooked rice he sold to the restaurant.

I think the reason we did not complain more strongly was that this was nothing new or shocking for us. But I am sure in the West even I would have caused a bigger stir and for sure the kitchen would have been closed down while health inspectors checked every aspect of the kitchen’s daily hygiene routine.

So do those of us who got to play in the mud and the rain have a healthier lifestyle, a better immune system, and a more pragmat­ic take on cleanliness than those who did not?