The Implications of Antibiotic Use in the Food System

All of the bacteria in your body weigh about three pounds, roughly equivalent to your brain. Recent studies suggest that otherwise normal individuals have lost 15-40% of their microbial diversity, needed to ward off disease. What does this mean? Dr. Martin J. Blaser, the director of the Human Microbiome Program at New York University, explains in his most recent book Missing Microbes: How the Overuse of Antibiotics Is Fueling Our Modern Plague.