Dutch toilets

Sjmarf@sh.itjust.works to Lemmy Shitpost@lemmy.world – 861 points –
212

Apparently this design was popular in Germany a hundred years or so ago. Its key advantage was allowing the user to examine their stools for signs of digestive health problems.

its so annoying having to use tongs :/

You don't have a knife?

Not “a” knife. “The” knife.

I know the joke and all, but recently the local theme park has replaced their toilet brushes with toilet rubber shovels. They work surprisingly well. They can both hack'n'slash a log, but also the back side is also ripped so you can use it to brush out the regular shit from the sides, while avoiding the dreaded paper clutter and other issues with a toilet brush being used by thousands of people daily.

It's like toilet brushes evolving into poop knives. Looks like this: https://pin.it/OKHBRlxjI

Culture shock #2. A public American toilet may require "thousands" of toilet brushings daily.

Tell me you were exaggerating... Right?

Yeah well, I'm not counting. On busy days, the toilets have queue lines all day long. Depending on the length of the visit and the willingness to use the brush, it's probably in the hundreds, or at least a lot more than anywhere else.

Amazon’s on Pinterest, then?

Neat design - could be quite effective under the rim. Just wonder about longevity of the hinge.

I dont need to examine my stools to know my digestive heath is horrific.

I thought it would just be for less splashing

It's definitely for less splashing. I hate the North American bowls that spray your ass when your turd dunks.

You just need to adopt the American diet so that you either spray the toilet or your turd is so large that it enters the water before falling and doesn't splash.

Yep, but nowadays they are losing popularity. I don't even know if you can still find them.

Story time: I once briefly lived in a place that had an old toilet bowl like this. You can still find them in older houses. One day I took a massive shit and then found out that the flush wasn't strong enough to get it down from there. And there wasn't a brush. Yikes. Just wanted to share that with you guys.

The trick is to put 3 pieces of toilet paper in beforehand, that way the whole shitboat can float away.

My shits at my grandma's would've been more comfy had I known this. I was always worried it wouldn't flush (which happened on occasion).

So what did you do next? I'm thoroughly invested in the story

Got a bucket of water to flush it. After that I always had the bucket ready before starting the business. Luckily I didn't stay there very long.

You wrap Your hand in toilet paper and give it a little push. That's what toilet paper is for.

So your shit just piles up on the upper part till it kisses your asshole?

I have some experience with these. The only problem is that as the vertically standing excrement begins to collapse forwards, there is a chace for it to keep contact and drag its top portion across, from your anus towards the front. You can avoid this with a maneuver, pulling yourself up and slightly forward, right after the singular vertical log begins losing contact with the excretion area.

This is not a joke

I haven't had a nice log come out in decades. Enjoy them while you can.

Males need 37g of fiber daily for optimum health. That's the equivalent of 568g of raspberries or 657g of green peas or 1,154g of broccoli. Might wanna start taking some psyllium husk so you don't get ass cancer.

How many weetabix biscuits?

Looks like they are 3.8g per 2 biscuit serving? So like 19.5 biscuits or around 370g.

If your diet is so lacking in fiber that you need to take pills to make up for it, fix your damn diet.

Don't take the pills - the serving size on them is very misleading. You have to take a ton of them to have any effect. Gotta go with the powder.

Nothing wrong with supplementation! It's hard to eat that much fiber (even if your diet is good) due to the relatively low fiber density of most foods. We adapted to our food sources, not so much the other way around, and when we did adapt our food sources to us we were not thinking of maximizing fiber content - and we don't spend all day chewing on fibrous, foraged plants anymore. Plus, psyllium husk is a food. It'd be the same as eating a shitload of flax or something but with fewer calories.

For instance, raspberries are one of the most fiber dense foods at 8g fiber/100g of berries. You'd need to eat 568g to get your RDA of fiber. The avg person eats around 1.85kg of food daily - 30% of your diet by weight would need to be raspberries (one of the most fiber dense foods) to get enough fiber. Even moreso with other fiber-rich foods, like broccoli. You'd need 1.1kg of broccoli each day (8kg/week). The sheer bulk of that amount of food would be challenging for most people and just isn't practical.

So you eat half a kilo of raspberries, and then the rest of your diet is a juice cleanse? Here an example diet: oats for breakfast (6 g), a sandwich loaded with greens for lunch (4 g), chili for dinner (15 g). Throw in an apple for a snack (5 g). It's really not that hard.

The National Academy of Medicine recommends:

• Women 51 and older: 21 grams of fiber per day
• Men 51 and older: 30 grams of fiber per day

Now your numbers go with 45 g per day, but honestly that example diet would leave me hungry. I'd probably also have a peanut butter and banana sandwich (7 g). Throw in a small amount of berries or raisins into the breakfast oats and we've hit your higher target.

Fair enough! It can be a little harder to hit consistently in practice depending on the level of variety in your diet, if you go out occasionally, etc. In my opinion and personal experience, anyway. But that is a solid and reasonable meal plan without a doubt.

The raspberries example was more an example of if one were to "fibermax" as the kids will be saying in 20yrs. Trying to most efficiently achieve the RDA with the most fiber dense foods possible - not intended as an actual, reasonable diet.

I gotta figure out a way to trademark "fibermax," the kids will absolutely be saying that in 20 years.

Haven't you thought of shitting in a backwards sitting position?

I prefer the kiss of poseidon over the casualities of deforestation

The real problem is your turds are exposed to open air the whole time, so the smell fucking awful the whole time.

Um... if you're holding on to that much shit, you may want you see a doctor.

You've clearly never seen an American eat. 3 triple burgers, a large fry, and a milkshake is the standard dinner while dieting.

People who downvoted you are weak stomached non Americans

I'm sure those who down voted shame their ancestors by leaving food on their plate.

Even after being told there are starving children in China...smh my head.

Fools! My family did that and now I've grown up to have a food stuffing fetish

(That is, deriving pleasure in eating about as much food as I can in one sitting)

Not necessarily sexual, just.. satisfying

Based. Source: American. Downvoters could never handle Taco Bell

It gives you the opportunity to examine it. I think that is the reason for the design.

Yeah but where's your poop knife?

That’s what the three shells are for.

I'm still trying to understand which of the three shells is the correct one to use as a poop knife

We all are. It’s one of the bonds that keeps civilization alive. Keep searching !

All 3 held between the fingers, with a punching action.

That brings up a question; if Wolverine claws at a poop and retracts his claws, does the poop get wiped off by his gloves and skin or does the poop go into his forearm?

These are the important questions that need to be addressed. We cannot let this go unanswered by the creators.

I had these in a few houses in Germany. I call them trophy shelf toilets.

Did you have the light switch outside the bathroom too? That way your friends can make you poop in the dark

Still better than a light sensor in a communal bathroom... outside of the stalls. That's how it is at my workplace. If I spend a bit too long pooping, and nobody else comes in to poop at the same time, I end up in the dark. Then when I have to wipe, I have to either risk opening the stall door and wave into the room, with my dirty ass hanging out, hoping nobody happens to enter the bathroom at that time, or wait patiently for someone to come in and reactivate the light. Makes me wonder how blind people check their wiping: do they go on flavor or smell?

Haha, buy some of those super cheap pop lights for closets and use double-sided M3 tape to put one inside every stall 🤣👍🏻

Or turn the flashlight on your phone on

Or EDC a Warrior 3 and turn on THE SUN...but nah, I was going for the commentary of the lights being installed more than the actual function of them.

Oh, is that not a thing some places? I think the majority are outside here in the UK, generally electricals are not allowed inside the bathroom (although I'm not sure this actually covers light switches as I'm sure some of them are in there...)

I thought the pull-string light switch inside the bathroom was the standard in the UK?

I've only seen switches outside bathrooms in the last 5 years, in recent "having the bathroom re-done" cases.

It might be an age of house or regional thing though.

I think it's against electrical code. You can have a pull string because the wires are on the ceiling which carries the same risk of getting water in it as the light itself that is also on the ceiling. A wall switch would be lower on the wall and has the risk of wet handed people coming directly in contact with it

Sometimes you'll see those "shavers only" sockets in bathrooms, which are different from your typical wall outlets in that they have a GCFI (also called RCD), and/or a built in fuse to limit current, and have a floating ground.

The light switch and light is likely tied to a "live loop" system which runs 230V, and has a 5 or 6 amp non-GCFI breaker on it. That is considerably more dangerous for a wet human to come in contact with.

In the US, it's extremely rare to have a light switch outside if yhe room with the light. Usually there's a lights witch and a couple sockets in the bathroom by the mirror.

Lol I'm in the states, but one of my friends houses had this "feature" growing up. I definitely turned the light off on him a few times. To top it off, this bathroom had no windows so it got fucking dark in there. It wouldn't even work today, everyone has phones w them now n would just use that after you turned it off. Kids these days...

I've never had to deal with this, but I always plug in those blue glow night lights in the bathroom so they don't crash into things when I go to take a piss in the middle of night.

They had these in Germany, too. If you took a particularly massive shit sometimes the water pressure wasn't enough to shove it into the hole.

I already commented about a poop knife so I won't repeat it here.

Problem has more to do with the streaks. There are many.

...then you use the brush to clean them? Is that a big deal?

Just scrape off with knife. You have to be told everything?

Just saying you have a process for dealing with the problem is not as good as solving the problem.

Is there some other problem being solved by the shelf? Like do they have really terrible water pressure and need to rely on gravity and a slope?

In my experience, the shelf helps avoid having water splash your nethers, which happens to me more often than leaving streaks, so I prefer it over having my urine splash back up at me.

Fortunately there was always plunger handy for pushing, so no chopping was needed.

These toilets also don't help with covering the smell of shit.

I mean, you flush it down regardless, so I never noticed a difference as far as that goes.

If it drops right in water it's much less smelly. I've used em all over different times, if you've got a real bad smelling poo you don't want that on no shelf!

American toilets gave me culture shock

They’re so shallow that you can’t even sit down without your balls touching the bowl or the water

I hated them, they made me anxious. But much worse were the low stall walls. Why america, why? When I take a shit I want a wall that actually serves the purpose of not having people see me taking a shit.

On another note, the Dutch style toilets were very common in Germany up until the 90s. Rare nowadays. I think they are actually superior. You see it, if you have a problem with your shit and even the largest shit doesn't splash water all over your intimate parts. On the other hand, you have to protect your balls from the large shit, when it goes "timber".

I’ve always known that our stall walls in the US were shit, but then I visited Sweden and saw how truly horrible we were.

Over there, there are no men’s rooms or women’s rooms. There are just several doors each to a private bathroom and so it doesn’t matter who uses which one.

I’m sure our “single room with flimsy stall dividers” design is the cheapest, plus it’s not as convenient for all the drug addicts and homeless people our society creates, so it will never change.

I think you mean high stall walls and not low. You're talking about the huge gap so the janitors can sweep and mop easier.

No, I meant that I literally could see people taking a shit when walking in the restrooms at several places, because the walls were just ~180cm high (and I am taller than 180cm).

I've never seen stall walls that short but usually when I'm sitting, I would not be able to see over it. Generally the giant gaps between panels are enough to let someone see you from the door.

You got long balls, Larry.

Those are actually French toilets. They were designed like this so you can check for blood and other abnormalities. British toilets were designed so the poop would fall in the water, reducing the stench. The British design proved more popular, yet the French design is better with less splashing and for checking. It's important to check, to find out if there's something wrong with your intestines like cancer (black blood) or a tapeworm. The British didn't find this important, just like washing hands after pooping.

It’s important to check, to find out if there’s something wrong with your intestines like cancer (black blood) or a tapeworm.

Hungarian here, many in this country prefer the "betegvécé" (French), yet cannot say anything about what they should check for. It's just virtue signaling, no matter how much people have been abusing that term.

reducing the stench splashing your testicles with the urine shit surface cleaner mixture

Are you unable to see blood if it falls in the water?

You can absolutely see your poop in the water and the water would turn red or a darker color if there was blood which is probably more obvious lol

If you don't wipe so it isn't covered with toilet paper, sure.

You can look before you throw toilet paper. How does a poop shelf act any different when you throw toilet paper on it

Pedophiles in the olympics, our strange toilets with the "poop shelf"; I just can't win today.

Edit: it's so you can inspect it. How is everyone else inspecting their poo?

I think for most people it's kinda a shit n forget situation. As soon as I have dropped the load I want to disown it and forget it faster than you can say "shit". You know just like pa did it.

Comments on toilets of France, England, and Germany by Slavoj Zizek: https://youtube.com/watch?v=8mtZmBvat4k

Another good bit (not in the video) is that Zizek thinks that's why Germans can endure great pain and sacrifices for an ideal…if you are strong enough to observe your shit for health reasons, there's nothing you can't do!

French toilets are BIS. Large, deep bowls with great pressure and a second commode for the greatest modern invention, the bidet. The French don't fuck around with their shit.

Using "bis" for toilets is funny, like you're grinding a raid at the hardware store hoping for an epic toilet drop.

It’s so you can examine your stool, you might have some blood or a consistency you don’t like, that way you see it

Wake up, coffee, breakfast, shit, see how much of last nights meal was really digested, shower, shave, work

Typical morning, idk what the big fuss is

It also helps you gauge the poop's internal temperature using the back of your scrote, if you are endowed with fairly loose balls.

I've never not been able to detect something like that with a water-under toilet

I’m a bit shocked with reactions I read. You’ve probably never heard of figure shitting. I tried to figure shit some letters of the alphabet. I’m great at the letter P and R.

Its hard but not impossible to do German umlauts ä,ö,ü.

I know the meme is that people use it to look at their poop, but honestly the main advantage is the 0% chance of water splashing up. I will take this design over the "standard" ones any day.

Have found that putting a little bit of TP in the water before commencing the act helps a lot to avoid Poseidon's kiss.

I once stopped in urgent need of a toilet at the dirtiest little gas station in the middle of nowhere, where the one guy on duty directed me out back to a foul, stunningly filthy toilet. After doing my business I arose and, turning to face the toilet, flushed. It was an old flush mechanism where the water just kind of fell in from all sides, causing a kind of trapped tsunami to eject a single drop of fresh poop water 7 feet up in the air and down straight into my mouth.

If my many decades of life have taught me anything, it's to close my mouth when flushing or scrubbing the toilet.

But what about just poop on some toilet paper, make no splash, and the smell is still not so hard, as with the dutch/German toilet

In hungary too in some older toilets. Tbh its better because of less splash.

If you regularly need to take stool samples like me it's easier as well. On the downside it's smellier.

Why smellier?

In the more typical style of toilet, the poop is quickly submerged in water, reducing the smell. With the shelf toilet, it remains in the air for all to smell.

Usa drops kids off at pool, the dutch stack shelves.

It looks bigger submerged So it's easier to be proud if you're an American

Poop and scoop

Just sit facing the wall.

That way you can use the shelf for your chocolate milk and comic book

Flanders here. Those shelved ones are not common but also not omg this is strange. But in kindergarden they are ( where i saw) mostly the norm. Handy to check stuff. ( Is it solid, no worms,... )

Gotta make sure that toilet plume(Google it) is aimed up between the legs!

Sweet summer child, I wish you will never need to experience true culture shock.

Strange hills Americans choose to die on for 500, Alex