Billy Reeder and friends of Springfield, Colo., for their question:

Why does food spoil?

Andy says the best thing about our wonderful world is its size. It is big enough to share. We share the dry land with such creatures as beavers, bears and bumblebees. We share the trees and the flowers with the birds. We share the seas with fishes and the great whales. And we also snare the whole world with the kingdom of minute microbes.

These tires living microbes are everywhere. They crowd the surface of every leaf. They ride on every speck of dust. No matter how hard we scrub, we can only remove ten per cent of them from our skin. They teen in various sorts and sizes. They are too small to be seen without a microscope. For it takes about 25,000 average sized microbes to m measure one inch.

Some people have mistaken ideas about the busy little microbes. Just because a few of them can harm and annoy us, they are against the whole kingdom of microbes.  All germs, say these people, are bad. This, says Andy, is just not so. Most microbes simply share our world without doing us good or harm. A few make us sick, others can spoil fur food. Many are so useful we simply could not get along without them.

Let's list some of the good points and some of the bad points of the microbes. Arty such balance sheet would come out strongly in favor of the little creatures.

There are colonies of microbes inside of you. They help digest your food. Some even fight off dangerous invading microbes. It takes microbes to make cheese, vinegar, sauerkraut and even our daily bread. Microbes digest rotting materials and turn them into nee, foods for the plants. They are some of nature’s little garbage men. One of their fobs is to purify our drinking water.

On the other hand, a certain microbe can give you measles. Another can deal out diphtheria. Others can decay your teeth. And still others are always ready to spoil your food. But we are smarter than microbes. Ye are learning to control their bad habits and enjoy their usefulness.

Plenty of microbes are present in every glass of pure milk, in every slice of fresh breads in every bite of healthful meat. While food is freshly cooked and refrigerated they rest in a harmless state. But they come to life when food is stale or warm. They start to eat and multiply. The food is spoiled as they devour and digest it.