I was baffled no one wrote here WHY anyone would do this. Here's the answer from the article:
Researchers say those who eat dirt do not do so to satisfy hunger or to meet a biochemical urge to acquire certain metals or minerals that might be missing from the diet. Rather, they do so because the practice has been learned culturally. Links Are Traced to West Africa
Dr. Frate said dirt eating is one of the few customs surviving among some Southern blacks that can be directly traced to ancestral origins in West Africa. Dirt-eating is common among some tribes in Nigeria today.
According to his research, Dr. Frate said it was not uncommon for slave owners to put masks over the mouths of slaves to keep them from eating dirt. The owners thought the practice was a cause of death and illness among slaves, when they were more likely dying from malnutrition.
I compost and a common practice is to throw a handful of your native soil into your pile when you start it, to inoculate it with local soil bacteria. Bacteria do most of the work in an active compost pile.
I wonder if people were getting some kind of gut flora benefit from this.
I wonder this exact thing, given that soil is a living organism full of beneficial bacteria and other organic materials. The food we eat consumes it, takes what it needs, and then we do the same.
I find it also interesting that while the article claims this is a cultural thing vs. being done for heath benefits, I’d argue it became cultural because of a universal understanding of health benefits.
Now I’m not saying this is some long lost concept that is the missing key to fix all our ills, however I can see how consuming soil was an integral part of maintaining gut health and boosting immunity way before we understood how those systems work.
Yeah I don’t see an answer, but it is possible that it is chemical and not about flora, because I keep seeing “clay” mentioned specifically, instead of “soil.”
I agree that just saying “it’s cultural” is not an explanation. Cultures are not entirely arbitrary.
Pretty much all customs are culturally transmitted - that’s kind of the definition. But they’re not necessarily totally arbitrary either - there is often some other information that can be added beyond “they have learned to do it.”
I can't speak for these specific people, but I know that eating clay can absorb toxins, like the kinds of poisons plants make to stop you eating them. There's also potentially mineral supplementation and introduction of beneficial bacteria.
But it's not very safe to eat dirt in modern times because we've poisoned a lot of the soil with various substances. You can buy edible dirt which is known to be safe.
The cause of the cultural behavior usually has a purpose though.
Yeah, but not necessarily one that is still relevant or even ever actually worked towards whatever goal there originally was. Cultural inertia is like that.
So it probably at some point had a purpose, but that purpose (whatever it was) might or might not apply any more or even be total nonsense.
Calm down everyone. They dug it from preferred dirt, cooked it, and seasoned it with salt and vinegar. Serving size = about a handful. Lay's sells a product with those exact same specifications.
FYI Ireland didn't choose to be a potato monoculture, it was forced on them by the British. The famine that hit them was collateral damage from the British subjugation of Ireland in an attempt to maximize profit through cash cropping, displacing the agriculture that the Irish had been using to feed themselves.
Two different people brought up the potato famine... not what I was trying to bring up with my simpleton joke.
I went with a country that, rightfully, enjoy potatoes and are known to.
Sometimes I scroll through, see an obvious shit post in what should not be a shit post sub. I go into the comments and they are all "yeah, it's true (personal example)" and I feel convinced a group of shit posters are just brigading the sub for the luls.
as a white Englishman, key and peele have such a knack for writing a sketch that teaches me about a culture and makes me get and laugh at the joke about something I didn't know was a thing until I saw the sketch.
This and the "gimme that OLD school" sketch are among them.
I, as a life-long midwestener moved out to the "south east" Atlantic coast for a bit. Stopped in a diner one morning and got some breakfast, and they asked if I wanted scrapple with my breakfast. Not my first time seeing it on a menu around there, so I asked what it was, and they told me it was like an omelet, but made with apple and potato shavings. "Alright" I say, as I am open to trying new foods...
"What in the whole grain pancakes kind of fuck is this?!" I thought when my plate arrived. It was quite literally cutting board scraps, with like one scrambled egg added to bind it all together. Literally rough and dirty potato skins, and the ends of tomatoes, I literally found a fucking apple stem in mine. I figured they were playing some kind of joke on me, but I looked around, and other people had the same thing, and they were eating it the fuck up. So I gave it a try. Needless to say, undercooked potato and apple skins were not appetizing. The texture was like eating slices of bicycle innertube, and the flavor was akin to licking a well used, but unwashed cutting board.
Anyway, that was my first and last time trying scrapple. Learn from my mistake, you have been warned.
I've actually seen "scrapple" at the grocery store, but that was a sausage-shaped loaf of hydrated corn meal, bacon grease/lard, and the barest whiff of seasoning to make it resemble food. My girlfirend's mom was from the poor south, and actually craved this meal from time to time.
This rendition was also very lackluster. You couldn't beat the price, as it was cheapest thing in the breakfast isle by a wide margin, but it sure as hell tasted like it.
I ate "scrapple" once and it was delicious. Maybe it was cooked better?
I was visiting my ex's relatives in Philly and one insisted that I come with them to a diner before I left. "You have to try scrapple, but I won't tell you what's in it till you do" grin.
I agreed without hesitation. I'm Creole. I'm from the swamp. I eat spicy-hot boiled hard-shell roaches, and raw mud-snot still in their teetees for flavor, and alligator assholes and rice in pig guts. Anything can taste good if you season it right, and if it doesn't, it's not worse than things I love already.
The scrapple I had was delicious. It was also the most seasoned thing I had eaten up there. It wasn't "spicy", but there was a wide variety of spices and it was extra peppery. It tasted like very fatty/greasy, slightly sweet, peppered breakfast sausage. She told me what was in it while i was eating it, looking all mischievous. Then I gave her the above line about my heritage, laughed, told her that just makes it more amazing, and kept eating.
She looked both slightly disappointed and filled with admiration. She loved it too, and I think I gave what was for her a shameful delight, a little more power and pride.
I'd eat someone's favorite mud if it tasted good, and my guts would probably be stronger for it, gaining flora they have been missing for at least two generations.
Y'all have a rich culinary tradition that is world-renowned for its ability to pull amazing flavors out of everything, including the trees! I'm not at all surprised that the Creole rendition of this breakfast dish was top shelf.
I eat spicy-hot boiled hard-shell roaches, and raw mud-snot still in their teetees for flavor, and alligator assholes and rice in pig guts.
If you told me that said dishes were the real deal, prepared in a traditional manner, I'd tell you right then and there that I'll be having seconds. Hell, I'd beg for cooking lessons.
No way I hell am I making some dishes but as you said, if someone prepares for me one that I'd normally be turned off from, I'll enthusiastically join in (though I probably will wait for them to take the first bite)
I think scrapple is just seasoned scraps. I didn't know what was in my scrapple exactly. I was told it was assholes and eyeballs, the ends of fruits and vegetables, and all the junk from the food no one eats.
I'm not too sure about what the version of scrapple you received was, it sounds like some kind of bastardized hash, but scrapple is a common breakfast thing in the Mid-Atlantic/Delaware valley area.
The version I'm familiar with as a Philadelphian, admittedly doesn't sound a whole lot better on paper, but the actual eating experience sounds a lot more pleasant. It's basically pork scraps and organ meats simmered down until they're falling apart and mixed with cornmeal and buckwheat then formed into a mushy loaf, which is then sliced and fried.
You're not going to identify any particular piece of pork or anything else in it, it's a pretty uniform grey mush, and the only real texture comes from frying it to give the outside a nice crispiness. Nothing tough or chewy about it, you barely need to chew it, the texture is probably more like polenta (which it kind of is) than anything else you might be familiar with. It also usually doesn't contain any apple or potatoes.
It's not everyone's cup of tea, but if you find yourself near Philly don't let whatever you were served in the south turn you off from trying actual scrapple.
Parts of Ohio have goetta, which I think is supposed to be pretty similar to scrapple but with oatmeal instead of corn meal.
I've also heard of "livermush" and "liver pudding" being served in some parts of the south, which honestly sound like dead-ringers for scrapple to me, though I have some friends from the south who insist that they're different from and better than scrapple.
I feel like whatever you were served was some southerner trying to recreate something they heard described one time but never actually tried themselves, or just slapping the name on something without knowing that there's another dish out there with the same name.
In Germany, clay is sold in drugstores to cure digestion issues or as mineral supply for hair and nails. I think they knew what they were doing and were shamed out of continuing.
As someone who grew up in the South, and lived as a teenager in the '80s, this is the first time I'm hearing about this 'practice', other than a diagnosis in the DSM.
At first I was imagining just a handful of dirt from a grassy patch - but it seems to be implied that they're actually eating clay - which I vaguely remember being told can help with a sore stomach.
However I'm also aware that clay can contain heavy metals, which baking can't remove, so I'm inclined to stay away and just have a bit of bread instead.
I've often heard some version of the suggestion that "kids should eat a pound of dirt by the time they're 5," to have healthy immune systems. The suggestion, as I've always understood it, is that kids should spend a lot of time outside, eating dirt incidentally from constantly being in nature, having dirty hands and dirt under their nails, tripping and falling in the dirt, breathing dirt kicked up while running around and rough housing, etc. Getting micro-exposure to lots of germs early through play to built up a strong immune response. I've never understood it to mean literal dirt eating, but now I wonder if that might be the origin.
It's still common to eat clay to get the minerals, help with digestion or reduce hunger in parts of Africa see the Contemporary practices section: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geophagia
I don't have a source, but when I was younger there were a few black kids in my school from super poor families, and their parents would put sugar and spices in clay for them for breakfast. It had some flavor and filled them up, even if there wasn't much nutritional value.
Then they finally added breakfast (instead of just lunch) to the free meal program for poor families when I was in late elementary, and they'd just eat at school.
A lot of kids only reliably get meals from school. In college, I got involved in a program with the food bank where we'd go to schools during their last period on Fridays and place backpacks full of food in the lockers of children from the poorest families. The blue bags we used were cheap and obvious, and we'd frequently find the previous week's bag still full. The kids were too embarrassed to get on the bus with the bags that identified them as poor.
So we had a fundraiser to buy 3 cheap but normal identical backpacks for each kid in the program. One for their everyday use, and 2 for the weekend food (we'd drop off a new one and take the previous week's bag for refilling). That way they'd swap their regular bookbag in their locker for the food bag and nothing looked unusual on the bus ride home.
I hadn't thought about that in a while. I need to make a donation to the food bank.
Also - give the food bank money, not food. They can buy food cheaper than you can, and they know what they actually need.
Ok, but why not, for example, wood, straw? Them are mostly inert and even somewhat healthy. I don't know about clay specifically but eating pebbles exposes you to high levels of toxic minerals.
People who are soo poor they've resorted to eating clay to feel full may not be in a position to know the healthiest way to temporarily the body into thinking it's not hungry.
Human geophagia is a form of pica – the craving and purposive consumption of non-food items – and is classified as an eating disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) if not socially or culturally appropriate.[6] Sometimes geophagy is a consequence of carrying a hookworm infection. Although its cause remains unknown, geophagy has many potential adaptive health benefits as well as negative consequences.[5][7]
My doctor told me that vitamin B12 deficiency is common these days, because we get B12 from bacteria that live in dirt and with how cleanly our food is now, you just don't get the occasional dirt in your diet anymore (and the animals you might consume don't really get that either).
So, maybe¹ eating dirt might actually be healthy.
¹) Okay, no. Get B12 supplements. They're almost as cheap as dirt and don't give you illnesses.
Estimates suggest that a healthy adult's body holds between 2 and 5 milligrams of vitamin B12, with approximately 50% of this total amount residing within the liver. This substantial reserve is why it can take anywhere from three to five years for a deficiency to manifest after an individual stops consuming B12-rich foods.
Large numbers look impressive, though, and since it's water-soluble, you're just going to pee out the excess.
I think B12 is found in most animal products. Interestingly, rabbits are one of few strict herbivores, and have to eat their own feces because it contains some B12 produced by their intestinal tract, as they have too few other dietary sources
Perhaps you mean the standard diet, which is omnivore and 70% plant based already, in which case yes - lots of people are under eating essential animal proteins and at risk for deficiencies.
And also at risk for cardiovascular disease.
I'd love to see a non epidemiological source for this. Especially in zero carb carnivores, heck even ketogenic people, not the 70% plant based omnivore that is carb loading and eating processed food all day. We know from early pre westernizationed health surveys of carnivore populations they didn't have CVD.
From my reading CVD is driven by inflammation and hyperinsulinemia. Zero carb carnivore fixes the insulin so the cardio vascular system works properly and can repair properly, and is very low inflammation.
it's disinformation to ask for the sources of your statements? My reading of the literature indicates a metabolically healthy individual eating meat and not inflammatory compounds like seed oils, and not suffering from hyperinsulinemia (excessive dietary carbohydrates) does not have a meaningful CVD risk. I'm happy to share my sources.
Wishing you all the best health and long and happy life.
How efficient! Why didn't we think of this before? We can make vitamin B12 inside our bodies, but instead of just retaining it, we'll make it so that it has to be shit out first then and re-ingested to be absorbed. Perfect!
Monkeys on Gibraltar do it, too. To treat stomach aches when they ate unhealthy. There is an abundance of bad food for them which they steal from tourists.
Should you start eating dirt now? You shouldn't, scientists say. Germs.
After cooking with high heat there should be no germs left. As stated in the article there are no health risks involved except if you eat such a large amount it blocks your intestines. Also even if you didn't cook it the germs that live in soil are not the same germs that make you sick, those you get from your fellow humans.
Also even if you didn’t cook it the germs that live in soil are not the same germs that make you sick, those you get from your fellow humans.
Ya, sure, you've obviously never heard of gardia, tetanus, botulism, histoplasmosis, anthrax, E coli, salmonella, and the ever popular listeria. Plus you could pick up a party of parasites and worms.
Very pastoral. Very grounding. Touch grass, acquire necrotizing fasciitis.
Not native to soil but may be on soil if faeces got on there
Or
Not dangerous in soil but will become dangerous if food gets into contact with it before fermenting
Or
Only dangerous getting into your blood, but not your mouth.
As long as there is no literal poop on the soil you can eat it raw. These people mentioned in the article were digging deep clay which would carry absolutely no risk of faeces contamination.
How would you know that no animal had ever crapped over the clay deposit and had rain drift in durable, long-lasting bacterial spores from the waste whiøe the rain was on its way through the clay to join the groundwater? That a burrowing critter didn’t die just upstream in the ground of where you’re digging? It’s not terribly likely that those would get you sick maybe but ‘absolutely no risk’ is a high bar to clear.
Also there can be other sorts of non-obvious contamination like if there are trace amounts of heavy metals. Kaopectate got sued by California because the clay contained in their popular anti-diarrhea pills had traces of lead, such that the adult version pills would have fifty micrograms of lead a pop or six to twelve micrograms for children. For reference California currently mandates a warning slapped on if a product exposes you to half a microgram of lead per day. It’s difficult to know the provenance and full risks of stuff dug from a hole for a regular person. Even trained people with a lot on the line sometimes screw up and get people hurt.
You are right about the risk of heavy metal contamination so wont comment on that. But if we are speaking about an animal that crapped on top of the clay pile then that should not be an issue. Soil in general but especially clay has an absolutely enormous surface area that adsorbs both bacteria and viruses. That's why ground water is usually safe to drink but surface water is not. A large amount of faeces leaking into the soil water from above would potentially contaminate the water with nitrate which could be a slight cancer risk if consumed in large quantities but there should be no risk of getting infected if you are digging deep unexposed clay, even if an animal crapped on top of the pile. As long as there is no heavy metal contamination eating deep clay is probably safer than eating a wild picked berry.
Clay swells when wet and shrinks when dry, the latter can open up deep fissures in it that act as channels for unfiltered water to flow down deeper than you may expect, leaving aside tectonic activity or other reasons that could cause such penetrations in the ground. The native plants also have impressively deep root systems that can provide similar gaps, and you may never know if it was there or not if the clay got wet again and sealed up the voids along with any presents washed down and absorbed into the clay matrix. It puts a lot of faith in Bo Taylor to break his back digging way way deep beyond the reaches of this above plus the necessary amount for scrubbing whatever waste may have gotten down that far… I agree it’s not especialy likely as far as bacterial infection alone, I just protest at the absolutely no risk formulation. There’s a reason bags of this stuff are sold as ‘novelty items’ rather than going through FDA approval.
I mean there was this one kid who ate dirt (he was white tho) but we all thought he was a bit touched in the head. He was the kid who pulled his underwear down to his ankles at the urinal to piss at school. I understand the joys doing that brings, but like get a fucking stall dude. I can't remember if he was also the kid who ate worms but he ate dirt so brain memory confused gets.
This means you all need to eat more dirt to make up for poor brain crippled JoshuBob. Two out of ten Veterinarians recommend you eat 8 cups of humus a day to maintain a luscious, rich sheen on your scales. Do you want to disappoint your veterinarian or get chitin pestilence? That's what I thought. Chitin pestilence it is.
Dirt (especially clay) is often rich in iron and magnesium. Humans used to use ceramic pottery extensively until recently. It wouldn't surprise me if there were some benefits.
So here in Russia there's such a thing as dachas, it's small plots of land with non-winterproof (sometimes not) small houses (sometimes more like a chickhouse for a human) on them, people go there at summer to have barbecues, grow stuff, have fun.
We have that, it's on a place with a lot of clay (good for growing apple trees, too) and I have always felt weird from eating and drinking anything with local water (from the well, boiled).
That is, I have ASD and BAD, and my mental condition is always different when being there a lot with that water, it's both more intense emotions, but also less like BAD symptoms. Also that somehow makes me feel full faster. And stronger.
Honestly it's as if in the city I had BAD, but there I had BPD. I become more touchy-feely there. Still it feels good and human, just not very safe.
But I've also read that water with such contents is not too good for one's kidneys, shouldn't overdo it. Better use filters.
The point is, I do feel as if my nutrition were better when using that water. Even a few portions of rice a day with lots of tea feel quite different there. But might also be the cleaner air, it's a relatively low place, though not a swamp, and a very pretty one.
When I was a kid (sometime in the early 90s in Philadelphia) I remember something coming on the news about women eating dirt. I always thought about it and wondered “why was that on the news..?” (since I was a kid and wasn’t paying attention), but now I know. This was an interesting read. Thanks for sharing
Ok, but you were THERE in the early 1990s!!! That was a historic time in history! Somewhere in the same city as you, at the same time as you, someone was shootin some B-ball outside of the school. When a couple of guys who were up to no good started making trouble in your neighborhood! The kid got in one little fight, but his mom got scared, and said he was going to live with his uncle in California.
And that's the story of how your city population shrank by 1 that day.
When I did Ayahuasca, my mom's friend joked that I would eat dirt with his son during the peak of the high. I didn't do it but he actually did it. When asked about, he told me that it taste like glory.
Several of my great aunts and uncles did this. And yeah, after they moved away they would have small boxes of dirt shipped to them from family that stayed behind.
White, Volga German descended farmer people, moved from the Midwest to the West Coast US.
which is probably better if you live in densely-populated areas since these areas are inclined to have more animals (e.g. pets) per km² and therefore more feces everywhere ...
Potatoes naturally were toxic nightshade (all parts). To be domesticated they had to be eaten with clay, which absorbs the toxin. There are still some varieties eaten with clay.
But did they have food allergies? Because there's a theory that increases in good allergies are because we live sufficiently sanitary lives that some people's immune systems basic go on a schizophrenic rampage whether somebody certain foods.
one famous incident is a boy ate some sand/dirt that had raccoon roundworms in it. balisyascaris is probably the most lethal roundworm out there. the house episode was based on it. since it also is lethal to other species too, besides the raccoon itself.
My grandparents are from Yazoo city, and my mom used to talk about how her grandmother and aunts used to eat dirt, specifically red dirt from a hill on the farm. I've never seen it, and never even thought about it until seeing this post.
I've learned about Medicinal clay from my wife. You can buy it in regular shops everywhere in Germany. She takes it dissolved in water if she has bad inflammation.
I mean, I could see how it actually might have some positive effects. There's all sorts of bacteria in soil. If you take a hunk of soil and bake it, any alive bacteria will be present. But even after baking, their dead forms will remain in various states of decomposition. So maybe eating dirt could act as a sort of broad-spectrum "vaccine" to certain pathogens. You're exposing your immune system to various pathogens rendered inert by the baking process. And maybe this decreases the number or severity of infections people get.
No idea if this would actually work. But it seems vaguely plausible at least.
Just so you're aware, that article you've linked isn't about literally eating dirt. It's about encouraging parents to let their kids play outside so they're more exposed to the natural environment so their bodies don't become hypersensitive to allergens and the like.
Exposure means many different thing depending on the context, but if you actually took the time to read the article you linked, it's clearly referring to external exposure - as in playing in dirt, getting covered in dirt, etc..
Which makes sense as we evolved to be outside - our immune systems need exposure to germs to calibrate properly.
But that is very different to advocating for consumption of dirt, which this article isn't doing.
Literally the only part of the article that actually references consumption of dirt is this paragraph...
So let them play in the dirt. If their hands end up in their mouths, or some of the dirt ends up in their mouths, keep an eye on them. If they develop a rash or fever, take them to a doctor. If they don’t, they’re probably fine.
Which is clearly telling parents to not stress out about accidental consumption.
This article is at best neutral about the practice, with a side of caution.
If their hands end up in their mouths, or some of the dirt ends up in their mouths, keep an eye on them. If they develop a rash or fever, take them to a doctor. If they don’t, they’re probably fine.
The article I linked was just the top result of many scientific articles and anthropological studies reiterating the same scientific viewpoint that oral exposure to uncontaminated soil(also known as eating dirt) is not dangerous and potentially-leaning-toward-likely healthy.
Sticking your dirty finger in your mouth =/= intentionally eating a handful of clay from a preferred source that is baked and seasoned with salt and vinegar. Incidental ingestion is not the same thing as intentional consumption. Are you gonna tell your kid that they need to lick their dirty hands clean?
Sticking your dirty finger in your mouth =/= intentionally eating a handful of clay....
Correct.
Incidental ingestion is not the same thing as intentional consumption.
Coreect again! great work.
Are you gonna tell your kid that they need to lick their dirty hands clean?
I highly recommend you do not tell kids to "lick their dirty hands clean", which ignores my own and the scientific advice in the linked and other articles regarding eating dirt.
And how can you confirm that when you didn't read far enough into the article you linked to realise it didn't actually say what you're trying to cite it as?
As @[email protected] said, a child incidentally ingesting dirt while playing outside is very different from intentional Geophagy.
Conflating the two and acting like everyone else is stupid for pointing that out doesn't look good on you.
In any case, if you want to discuss an article that is actually about Geophagy, and gives a fairly balanced and objective look into Geophagy and its potential health benefits and risks, I'll give you one.
Certain types of Clays (not just everyday soil) are believed to be able to provide real medical benefits when consumed, mostly in the realm of relieving GI tract conditions ranging from stomach irritation all the way to parasitic infections.
However, that is not the same as saying that regular Geophagy is healthy.
Again, certain types of clays can contain minerals in high quantities of Macro and Micro nutrients that the body cannot naturally produce.
But there is a good reason why the cultures where Geophagy is most prevalent are also cultures where there either is or was a high level of regular food scarcity.
The bioavailability of these minerals is generally quite low compared to organic sources, and these mineral rich clays often contain an unsafe level of heavy metals to boot - which can cause many, many issues with chronic consumption.
TLDR: Acute consumption of uncontaminated dirt definitely won't hurt you, and can in some cases may actually carry medical benefits - but chronic Geophagy is not the health kick anybody should be looking for - ranging from sort-of harmless to potentially very harmful over a long enough time period.
Assuming other people haven't read an article because you're having trouble understanding it is kinda funny.
maybe you guys can start a reading group with each other rather than trying to make things up or put words in others' mouths; nobody else is having the comprehension problems you share.
I was trying to give you benefit of doubt that you didn't do enough due diligence when grabbing an article to link - hence I tried to throw an olive branch in the form of an actual article on geophagy to discuss.
But seeing how impolitely persistent you are that this article says something that it plainly does not makes me think that you're actually a victim of the Dunning-Kruger effect and that you simply do not understand that the article title "Should we let kids eat dirt?" Isn't literally what the article is about.
Which is to say that if you're so confident that everybody disagreeing with you is wrong, please give us any quote in where it even just implies that eating dirt healthy for children?
And as for everybody agreeing with you?
You should really check the like:dislike ratio on your comments before saying that, because they tell a very different story. Literally your only comment with a positive ratio was the first one, and I'd be more than willing to bet that was from people who scrolled by it, felt your comment affirmed their belief, then left without actually reading the article.
I really don't think it was "common" up to the 80s. I remember reading about this in high school around 1970, when it was described as an old practice, uncommon and eccentric but still found among a few rural poor. I remember they used the term "sweet dirt" to describe dirt they considered edible.
Born in the southern US. Great grandparents were dairy farmers in AL. Doesn't get much more rural southern.
Asked my family about this. My granddad had heard that people existed who did this when he was a child (~1940's-50's?) but never saw it nor heard of it since. Nobody else had heard of it at all.
I'm sure it must've happened, but I don't think it was as ubiquitous as the wording here makes it seem.
(Also learned of a family member who ate dirt as a young child, but this was despite the wishes of everyone around him 😂)
When I read about this practice a long time ago it was talked about more as an eccentric preference, like gum or tictacs, not a desperate means of nourisment - although it might have been driven by deficiency cravings. And what I've read about it didn't mention baking, so it seems like a great way to ingest parasites.
The greatest measure of our society's most tragic failings is that I can't just get on a train/boat asap to give you a hug. Fuel ain't free and community doesn't benefit power, so by neither measure can I afford the day(s) away for affection.
My grandmother and mother both got pica during childbirth. Grandmother ate a spoonful of dirt and was satisfied, I'd have to call mother but I think she'd just ignore the question these days.
I feel like there's a decent difference between dirt and clay. Like the title made me imagine the same dirt that's in a lawn with bugs and stuff; clay I imagine as being cleaner and more similar to eating wax or play-doh.
yeah i think it's similar in effect to fiber maybe? it's a very low-calorie food that kinda cleanes the colon because it pushes everything in it out, while adding no new calories for a while, so the colon has a chance to "cool down" and reduce the bacterial load for a while, so it can heal. i suspect it's probably good for colon health actually.
I mean, I drink my urine for the sulphur qualities in alchemy, which are a different thing entirely than what sulphur is in chemistry. Makes my teeth hurt less, I find. Must be good Karma in a yellow spectrum of frequencies. Don't eat your poop though. That's a bad idea, kids.
Naw, the lead in the pipes that bring water to our houses in almost the entirety of the United States explains that. Not to mention that brief period of time when it was in our gas and polluted our air
that's crazy, I didn't know over 100,000,000 people who lived in a bioregion are mentally ill and also advocate for a criminal, damn. Or am I missing the point you were trying to make?
because they are not. just the loudest ones that feel they have to constantly assert their self-percieved "alpha" status and denegrate contrasting ideas
is this problem limited to people who act like that in the South, or people in general who act like that? In other words, if someone was from Oregon or Colorado and was mentally ill and pro-criminal, would you feel the same toward them?
Some people eat dirt, some eat heaps of sugar every day, some feast on the carcass of dead animals.
To me all three of these are weird. Humans are funny creatures
Even weirder to compare these three extremely different things. "Ah yes eating dirt makes you all WEIRD, unlike my extremely superior vegan self who would never stoop to such pathetic lows. No, of course I don't have friends and I just cannot figure out why."
Not that it matters at all what you call it, but it certainly primarily is one.
But sure let's expand the context so we can sealion and distract from the fact that it's extremely weird to look for excuses to publicly write judgy bullshit about what other people eat.
If I were that Southerner, and some professor guy comes along, I would tell him such stories too.
Yeah every culture went through their phase of tricking ethnographers on this.
I was baffled no one wrote here WHY anyone would do this. Here's the answer from the article:
Thanks for citing this, but it still doesn't explain why this custom has developed.
The most likely explanation is that kaolinite clay is known to reduce nausea and diarrhea.
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/public-health/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2022.893831/full
I compost and a common practice is to throw a handful of your native soil into your pile when you start it, to inoculate it with local soil bacteria. Bacteria do most of the work in an active compost pile.
I wonder if people were getting some kind of gut flora benefit from this.
Depending on the composition of the soil it might also have antiparasitic properties.
Or they could be beneficial parasites, like that episode of the space show.
I wonder this exact thing, given that soil is a living organism full of beneficial bacteria and other organic materials. The food we eat consumes it, takes what it needs, and then we do the same.
I find it also interesting that while the article claims this is a cultural thing vs. being done for heath benefits, I’d argue it became cultural because of a universal understanding of health benefits.
Now I’m not saying this is some long lost concept that is the missing key to fix all our ills, however I can see how consuming soil was an integral part of maintaining gut health and boosting immunity way before we understood how those systems work.
Yeah I don’t see an answer, but it is possible that it is chemical and not about flora, because I keep seeing “clay” mentioned specifically, instead of “soil.”
I agree that just saying “it’s cultural” is not an explanation. Cultures are not entirely arbitrary.
What rational reason is there for people to eat cereal for breakfast?
Cereal was designed to prevent masturbation.
Cream of Wheat, not cream of meat.
I'd say it does a pretty good job. I hardly ever jack off while eating Cheerios in the morning.
There's always a reason, but it doesn't need to be entirely rational. Kellogg was a nut, but that's a different topic, no?
Then why are they called Apple Jacks?!
That's why I rub out a fat one first and THEN eat the cereal.
That'll show kellogg
Yeah pour it in the trousers!
That's true for a lot of customs.
Pretty much all customs are culturally transmitted - that’s kind of the definition. But they’re not necessarily totally arbitrary either - there is often some other information that can be added beyond “they have learned to do it.”
I can't speak for these specific people, but I know that eating clay can absorb toxins, like the kinds of poisons plants make to stop you eating them. There's also potentially mineral supplementation and introduction of beneficial bacteria.
But it's not very safe to eat dirt in modern times because we've poisoned a lot of the soil with various substances. You can buy edible dirt which is known to be safe.
Wait, what?
Oh I agree.
The cause of the cultural behavior usually has a purpose though.
We need to bring back sun god sacrifices, then. Maybe that's why global warming and Stacy won't go out with me.
Yeah, but not necessarily one that is still relevant or even ever actually worked towards whatever goal there originally was. Cultural inertia is like that.
So it probably at some point had a purpose, but that purpose (whatever it was) might or might not apply any more or even be total nonsense.
In clinic, this is called pica.
Dirt is full of streptomyces species and spores. It's why dirt smells like dirt. Those species produce most of our antibiotics.
Calm down everyone. They dug it from preferred dirt, cooked it, and seasoned it with salt and vinegar. Serving size = about a handful. Lay's sells a product with those exact same specifications.
Did... did you just compare dirt to salt and vinegar potato chips?
The chips are probably worse for you tbh
Potatoes are dirt tumors.
All of Ireland clenched their fists at this comment.
FYI Ireland didn't choose to be a potato monoculture, it was forced on them by the British. The famine that hit them was collateral damage from the British subjugation of Ireland in an attempt to maximize profit through cash cropping, displacing the agriculture that the Irish had been using to feed themselves.
Okay then...
As someone who loves potatoes I'M clenching my fists at his dirt tumors comment.
Better?
🚨 🚨 wee-woo wee-woo 🚨 🚨
Your joke has been assessed and approve as factually accurate. Don't let it happen again.
This has been the joke police.
Ireland has only had taters for 400 years and the famine was caused by british landlords.
Two different people brought up the potato famine... not what I was trying to bring up with my simpleton joke. I went with a country that, rightfully, enjoy potatoes and are known to.
I don't think tubers=tumors. They're delicious.
It's tubers, not tumors.
They said what they said.
No, they compared dirt to Lay's salt and vinegar chips. That's not the same as comparing dirt to any and all said and vinegar chips.
Still less feces than McDonalds.
Sometimes I scroll through, see an obvious shit post in what should not be a shit post sub. I go into the comments and they are all "yeah, it's true (personal example)" and I feel convinced a group of shit posters are just brigading the sub for the luls.
This is one of those moments.
as a white Englishman, key and peele have such a knack for writing a sketch that teaches me about a culture and makes me get and laugh at the joke about something I didn't know was a thing until I saw the sketch.
This and the "gimme that OLD school" sketch are among them.
When I first saw this skit, all I could think of was the jar of pickled pig's feet that would get cracked open at family gatherings.
I can understand that.
However I grew up in the US south. My response was "Yea... that sounds about right..."
Let me tell you about scrapple.
I, as a life-long midwestener moved out to the "south east" Atlantic coast for a bit. Stopped in a diner one morning and got some breakfast, and they asked if I wanted scrapple with my breakfast. Not my first time seeing it on a menu around there, so I asked what it was, and they told me it was like an omelet, but made with apple and potato shavings. "Alright" I say, as I am open to trying new foods...
"What in the whole grain pancakes kind of fuck is this?!" I thought when my plate arrived. It was quite literally cutting board scraps, with like one scrambled egg added to bind it all together. Literally rough and dirty potato skins, and the ends of tomatoes, I literally found a fucking apple stem in mine. I figured they were playing some kind of joke on me, but I looked around, and other people had the same thing, and they were eating it the fuck up. So I gave it a try. Needless to say, undercooked potato and apple skins were not appetizing. The texture was like eating slices of bicycle innertube, and the flavor was akin to licking a well used, but unwashed cutting board.
Anyway, that was my first and last time trying scrapple. Learn from my mistake, you have been warned.
I've actually seen "scrapple" at the grocery store, but that was a sausage-shaped loaf of hydrated corn meal, bacon grease/lard, and the barest whiff of seasoning to make it resemble food. My girlfirend's mom was from the poor south, and actually craved this meal from time to time.
This rendition was also very lackluster. You couldn't beat the price, as it was cheapest thing in the breakfast isle by a wide margin, but it sure as hell tasted like it.
I ate "scrapple" once and it was delicious. Maybe it was cooked better?
I was visiting my ex's relatives in Philly and one insisted that I come with them to a diner before I left. "You have to try scrapple, but I won't tell you what's in it till you do" grin.
I agreed without hesitation. I'm Creole. I'm from the swamp. I eat spicy-hot boiled hard-shell roaches, and raw mud-snot still in their teetees for flavor, and alligator assholes and rice in pig guts. Anything can taste good if you season it right, and if it doesn't, it's not worse than things I love already.
The scrapple I had was delicious. It was also the most seasoned thing I had eaten up there. It wasn't "spicy", but there was a wide variety of spices and it was extra peppery. It tasted like very fatty/greasy, slightly sweet, peppered breakfast sausage. She told me what was in it while i was eating it, looking all mischievous. Then I gave her the above line about my heritage, laughed, told her that just makes it more amazing, and kept eating.
She looked both slightly disappointed and filled with admiration. She loved it too, and I think I gave what was for her a shameful delight, a little more power and pride.
I'd eat someone's favorite mud if it tasted good, and my guts would probably be stronger for it, gaining flora they have been missing for at least two generations.
Y'all have a rich culinary tradition that is world-renowned for its ability to pull amazing flavors out of everything, including the trees! I'm not at all surprised that the Creole rendition of this breakfast dish was top shelf.
If you told me that said dishes were the real deal, prepared in a traditional manner, I'd tell you right then and there that I'll be having seconds. Hell, I'd beg for cooking lessons.
Hard shelled roaches is crayfish. I think mud snot still in the tees tees is oysters.
I think.
Both are delicious, properly served. I just ate a half dozen raw oysters.
No way I hell am I making some dishes but as you said, if someone prepares for me one that I'd normally be turned off from, I'll enthusiastically join in (though I probably will wait for them to take the first bite)
Was it also potato and apple or is “scrapple” a general purpose term for an omelette made out of whatever scraps are available?
I think scrapple is just seasoned scraps. I didn't know what was in my scrapple exactly. I was told it was assholes and eyeballs, the ends of fruits and vegetables, and all the junk from the food no one eats.
Only time I've had scrapple was in Philly, at a diner. And it was delicious.
Clearly we found the good scrapple. I think I won't bother eating it again unless I'm in a diner in Philly
Scrapple is made from the stuff that's not good enough to go in to hotdogs.
Source: I'm Pennsylvania Dutch, we invented it.
I once heard Spam described as "everything but the oink"
And so when I describe scrapple, I usually start with that, and then describe scrapple as being "mostly oink"
I'm not too sure about what the version of scrapple you received was, it sounds like some kind of bastardized hash, but scrapple is a common breakfast thing in the Mid-Atlantic/Delaware valley area.
The version I'm familiar with as a Philadelphian, admittedly doesn't sound a whole lot better on paper, but the actual eating experience sounds a lot more pleasant. It's basically pork scraps and organ meats simmered down until they're falling apart and mixed with cornmeal and buckwheat then formed into a mushy loaf, which is then sliced and fried.
You're not going to identify any particular piece of pork or anything else in it, it's a pretty uniform grey mush, and the only real texture comes from frying it to give the outside a nice crispiness. Nothing tough or chewy about it, you barely need to chew it, the texture is probably more like polenta (which it kind of is) than anything else you might be familiar with. It also usually doesn't contain any apple or potatoes.
It's not everyone's cup of tea, but if you find yourself near Philly don't let whatever you were served in the south turn you off from trying actual scrapple.
Parts of Ohio have goetta, which I think is supposed to be pretty similar to scrapple but with oatmeal instead of corn meal.
I've also heard of "livermush" and "liver pudding" being served in some parts of the south, which honestly sound like dead-ringers for scrapple to me, though I have some friends from the south who insist that they're different from and better than scrapple.
I feel like whatever you were served was some southerner trying to recreate something they heard described one time but never actually tried themselves, or just slapping the name on something without knowing that there's another dish out there with the same name.
Fantastic description!
In Germany, clay is sold in drugstores to cure digestion issues or as mineral supply for hair and nails. I think they knew what they were doing and were shamed out of continuing.
As someone who grew up in the South, and lived as a teenager in the '80s, this is the first time I'm hearing about this 'practice', other than a diagnosis in the DSM.
I guess you aren't a black lady in the south.
At first I was imagining just a handful of dirt from a grassy patch - but it seems to be implied that they're actually eating clay - which I vaguely remember being told can help with a sore stomach.
However I'm also aware that clay can contain heavy metals, which baking can't remove, so I'm inclined to stay away and just have a bit of bread instead.
I've often heard some version of the suggestion that "kids should eat a pound of dirt by the time they're 5," to have healthy immune systems. The suggestion, as I've always understood it, is that kids should spend a lot of time outside, eating dirt incidentally from constantly being in nature, having dirty hands and dirt under their nails, tripping and falling in the dirt, breathing dirt kicked up while running around and rough housing, etc. Getting micro-exposure to lots of germs early through play to built up a strong immune response. I've never understood it to mean literal dirt eating, but now I wonder if that might be the origin.
Thank you that makes more sense, the title I took to be incorrect. When I work outside I often get dirt in my mucus when I blow my nose.
It's still common to eat clay to get the minerals, help with digestion or reduce hunger in parts of Africa see the Contemporary practices section: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geophagia
we're getting punked, right? this is citogenesis? someone just made it up? does anyone have a primary source??
I don't have a source, but when I was younger there were a few black kids in my school from super poor families, and their parents would put sugar and spices in clay for them for breakfast. It had some flavor and filled them up, even if there wasn't much nutritional value.
Then they finally added breakfast (instead of just lunch) to the free meal program for poor families when I was in late elementary, and they'd just eat at school.
A lot of kids only reliably get meals from school. In college, I got involved in a program with the food bank where we'd go to schools during their last period on Fridays and place backpacks full of food in the lockers of children from the poorest families. The blue bags we used were cheap and obvious, and we'd frequently find the previous week's bag still full. The kids were too embarrassed to get on the bus with the bags that identified them as poor.
So we had a fundraiser to buy 3 cheap but normal identical backpacks for each kid in the program. One for their everyday use, and 2 for the weekend food (we'd drop off a new one and take the previous week's bag for refilling). That way they'd swap their regular bookbag in their locker for the food bag and nothing looked unusual on the bus ride home.
I hadn't thought about that in a while. I need to make a donation to the food bank.
Also - give the food bank money, not food. They can buy food cheaper than you can, and they know what they actually need.
Tyfys 🫡. I will need to join my local food bank as well
Shameful we let children go hungry like this
Ok, but why not, for example, wood, straw? Them are mostly inert and even somewhat healthy. I don't know about clay specifically but eating pebbles exposes you to high levels of toxic minerals.
People who are soo poor they've resorted to eating clay to feel full may not be in a position to know the healthiest way to temporarily the body into thinking it's not hungry.
Availability, ease of mastication, ease of swallowing.
If you had sawdust spices and and water you might have a decent shot, but that's not all that easy to make without tools.
Clay, sand and soil are pretty easy to get to.
Pica is the name to Google
Geophagia
NYT is a reliable source.
Absolutely. Always on the right side of history.
I remember reading this in a travel book from a danish author.
The person he asked about the custom was perplexed when he told him that he did not eat dirt.
My doctor told me that vitamin B12 deficiency is common these days, because we get B12 from bacteria that live in dirt and with how cleanly our food is now, you just don't get the occasional dirt in your diet anymore (and the animals you might consume don't really get that either).
So, maybe¹ eating dirt might actually be healthy.
¹) Okay, no. Get B12 supplements. They're almost as cheap as dirt and don't give you illnesses.
My knock off 5 hour energy gives me 20,000% of my daily dose of B12!
B12 isnt easily absorbed by the body, thats why supplements and food have wild daily portions, so even if you pee most of it, you still absorb some.
You probably have enough B12 stored in your body to last for years.
Large numbers look impressive, though, and since it's water-soluble, you're just going to pee out the excess.
Methocobalomin is.
https://ranimd.com/articles/does-drinking-alcohol-affect-vitamin-b12-levels
I think there are less stupid reasons for B12 deficiency
I think B12 is found in most animal products. Interestingly, rabbits are one of few strict herbivores, and have to eat their own feces because it contains some B12 produced by their intestinal tract, as they have too few other dietary sources
Most carnivore humans are b12 deficient. And also at risk for cardiovascular disease.
Everyone should just take b12 and d supplements.
How are carnivores at high risk for B12 deficiency?
https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/VitaminB12-HealthProfessional/
Perhaps you mean the standard diet, which is omnivore and 70% plant based already, in which case yes - lots of people are under eating essential animal proteins and at risk for deficiencies.
I'd love to see a non epidemiological source for this. Especially in zero carb carnivores, heck even ketogenic people, not the 70% plant based omnivore that is carb loading and eating processed food all day. We know from early pre westernizationed health surveys of carnivore populations they didn't have CVD.
From my reading CVD is driven by inflammation and hyperinsulinemia. Zero carb carnivore fixes the insulin so the cardio vascular system works properly and can repair properly, and is very low inflammation.
The good news is that people like this won't spread disinformation for long...because they'll die very young
it's disinformation to ask for the sources of your statements? My reading of the literature indicates a metabolically healthy individual eating meat and not inflammatory compounds like seed oils, and not suffering from hyperinsulinemia (excessive dietary carbohydrates) does not have a meaningful CVD risk. I'm happy to share my sources.
Wishing you all the best health and long and happy life.
Yeah, and I can cherry pick scientific literature that says smoking tobacco is healthy too
How efficient! Why didn't we think of this before? We can make vitamin B12 inside our bodies, but instead of just retaining it, we'll make it so that it has to be shit out first then and re-ingested to be absorbed. Perfect!
Nutritional yeast is also cheap and supposed to be a good supplement of b12 too
It was common among black women in certain communities in rural Alabama and Mississippi - not a common nationwide practice of all americans.
Monkeys on Gibraltar do it, too. To treat stomach aches when they ate unhealthy. There is an abundance of bad food for them which they steal from tourists.
Should you start eating dirt now? You shouldn't, scientists say. Germs.
After cooking with high heat there should be no germs left. As stated in the article there are no health risks involved except if you eat such a large amount it blocks your intestines. Also even if you didn't cook it the germs that live in soil are not the same germs that make you sick, those you get from your fellow humans.
Ya, sure, you've obviously never heard of gardia, tetanus, botulism, histoplasmosis, anthrax, E coli, salmonella, and the ever popular listeria. Plus you could pick up a party of parasites and worms.
Very pastoral. Very grounding. Touch grass, acquire necrotizing fasciitis.
All the ones you listed are either:
Not native to soil but may be on soil if faeces got on there Or Not dangerous in soil but will become dangerous if food gets into contact with it before fermenting Or Only dangerous getting into your blood, but not your mouth.
As long as there is no literal poop on the soil you can eat it raw. These people mentioned in the article were digging deep clay which would carry absolutely no risk of faeces contamination.
How would you know that no animal had ever crapped over the clay deposit and had rain drift in durable, long-lasting bacterial spores from the waste whiøe the rain was on its way through the clay to join the groundwater? That a burrowing critter didn’t die just upstream in the ground of where you’re digging? It’s not terribly likely that those would get you sick maybe but ‘absolutely no risk’ is a high bar to clear.
Also there can be other sorts of non-obvious contamination like if there are trace amounts of heavy metals. Kaopectate got sued by California because the clay contained in their popular anti-diarrhea pills had traces of lead, such that the adult version pills would have fifty micrograms of lead a pop or six to twelve micrograms for children. For reference California currently mandates a warning slapped on if a product exposes you to half a microgram of lead per day. It’s difficult to know the provenance and full risks of stuff dug from a hole for a regular person. Even trained people with a lot on the line sometimes screw up and get people hurt.
You are right about the risk of heavy metal contamination so wont comment on that. But if we are speaking about an animal that crapped on top of the clay pile then that should not be an issue. Soil in general but especially clay has an absolutely enormous surface area that adsorbs both bacteria and viruses. That's why ground water is usually safe to drink but surface water is not. A large amount of faeces leaking into the soil water from above would potentially contaminate the water with nitrate which could be a slight cancer risk if consumed in large quantities but there should be no risk of getting infected if you are digging deep unexposed clay, even if an animal crapped on top of the pile. As long as there is no heavy metal contamination eating deep clay is probably safer than eating a wild picked berry.
Clay swells when wet and shrinks when dry, the latter can open up deep fissures in it that act as channels for unfiltered water to flow down deeper than you may expect, leaving aside tectonic activity or other reasons that could cause such penetrations in the ground. The native plants also have impressively deep root systems that can provide similar gaps, and you may never know if it was there or not if the clay got wet again and sealed up the voids along with any presents washed down and absorbed into the clay matrix. It puts a lot of faith in Bo Taylor to break his back digging way way deep beyond the reaches of this above plus the necessary amount for scrubbing whatever waste may have gotten down that far… I agree it’s not especialy likely as far as bacterial infection alone, I just protest at the absolutely no risk formulation. There’s a reason bags of this stuff are sold as ‘novelty items’ rather than going through FDA approval.
Dig in, then. :)
That's what surprised me; I assumed it was beneficial to the gut biome, but it's baked dead. Maybe there's nutritional benefit?
or from animal feces
There is a lot of authoritative speculation in the comments on this one
I mean there was this one kid who ate dirt (he was white tho) but we all thought he was a bit touched in the head. He was the kid who pulled his underwear down to his ankles at the urinal to piss at school. I understand the joys doing that brings, but like get a fucking stall dude. I can't remember if he was also the kid who ate worms but he ate dirt so brain memory confused gets.
This means you all need to eat more dirt to make up for poor brain crippled JoshuBob. Two out of ten Veterinarians recommend you eat 8 cups of humus a day to maintain a luscious, rich sheen on your scales. Do you want to disappoint your veterinarian or get chitin pestilence? That's what I thought. Chitin pestilence it is.
I don't really know what to make of that but congratulations or that sucks I guess
To learn more about earth-eating in animals and humans, check out the Wikipedia page on geophagia.
Dirt (especially clay) is often rich in iron and magnesium. Humans used to use ceramic pottery extensively until recently. It wouldn't surprise me if there were some benefits.
So here in Russia there's such a thing as dachas, it's small plots of land with non-winterproof (sometimes not) small houses (sometimes more like a chickhouse for a human) on them, people go there at summer to have barbecues, grow stuff, have fun.
We have that, it's on a place with a lot of clay (good for growing apple trees, too) and I have always felt weird from eating and drinking anything with local water (from the well, boiled).
That is, I have ASD and BAD, and my mental condition is always different when being there a lot with that water, it's both more intense emotions, but also less like BAD symptoms. Also that somehow makes me feel full faster. And stronger.
Honestly it's as if in the city I had BAD, but there I had BPD. I become more touchy-feely there. Still it feels good and human, just not very safe.
But I've also read that water with such contents is not too good for one's kidneys, shouldn't overdo it. Better use filters.
The point is, I do feel as if my nutrition were better when using that water. Even a few portions of rice a day with lots of tea feel quite different there. But might also be the cleaner air, it's a relatively low place, though not a swamp, and a very pretty one.
When I was a kid (sometime in the early 90s in Philadelphia) I remember something coming on the news about women eating dirt. I always thought about it and wondered “why was that on the news..?” (since I was a kid and wasn’t paying attention), but now I know. This was an interesting read. Thanks for sharing
Ok, but you were THERE in the early 1990s!!! That was a historic time in history! Somewhere in the same city as you, at the same time as you, someone was shootin some B-ball outside of the school. When a couple of guys who were up to no good started making trouble in your neighborhood! The kid got in one little fight, but his mom got scared, and said he was going to live with his uncle in California.
And that's the story of how your city population shrank by 1 that day.
In South Epsteinia they eat dirt. And they only season it with salt and vinegar because they're white.
Wtf
turns out that a lot of weird things exist. the world is truly a big place!
Murica!
When I did Ayahuasca, my mom's friend joked that I would eat dirt with his son during the peak of the high. I didn't do it but he actually did it. When asked about, he told me that it taste like glory.
Astrophage, eat your heart out.
Nah, mate, that's cardiophage you're thinking of
Several of my great aunts and uncles did this. And yeah, after they moved away they would have small boxes of dirt shipped to them from family that stayed behind.
White, Volga German descended farmer people, moved from the Midwest to the West Coast US.
I remember making mud pies as a kid. We never ate them though.
which is probably better if you live in densely-populated areas since these areas are inclined to have more animals (e.g. pets) per km² and therefore more feces everywhere ...
Potatoes naturally were toxic nightshade (all parts). To be domesticated they had to be eaten with clay, which absorbs the toxin. There are still some varieties eaten with clay.
Hopeful they did it far from outhouses.
Dirt is loaded with parasites even today, in countries with poor sanitation.
That's what the cooking is for I imagine
So you're telling me these dirt eaters have really strong immune systems
But did they have food allergies? Because there's a theory that increases in good allergies are because we live sufficiently sanitary lives that some people's immune systems basic go on a schizophrenic rampage whether somebody certain foods.
That which doesn't kill you can always main you horribly or infect you for life.
one famous incident is a boy ate some sand/dirt that had raccoon roundworms in it. balisyascaris is probably the most lethal roundworm out there. the house episode was based on it. since it also is lethal to other species too, besides the raccoon itself.
My grandparents are from Yazoo city, and my mom used to talk about how her grandmother and aunts used to eat dirt, specifically red dirt from a hill on the farm. I've never seen it, and never even thought about it until seeing this post.
I've learned about Medicinal clay from my wife. You can buy it in regular shops everywhere in Germany. She takes it dissolved in water if she has bad inflammation.
I have yet to try it.
It's called "Heilerde" for anyone who's interested
I mean, I could see how it actually might have some positive effects. There's all sorts of bacteria in soil. If you take a hunk of soil and bake it, any alive bacteria will be present. But even after baking, their dead forms will remain in various states of decomposition. So maybe eating dirt could act as a sort of broad-spectrum "vaccine" to certain pathogens. You're exposing your immune system to various pathogens rendered inert by the baking process. And maybe this decreases the number or severity of infections people get.
No idea if this would actually work. But it seems vaguely plausible at least.
Folk wisdom says it's healthy. doctors say it's healthy.
Go for it.
Just so you're aware, that article you've linked isn't about literally eating dirt. It's about encouraging parents to let their kids play outside so they're more exposed to the natural environment so their bodies don't become hypersensitive to allergens and the like.
Is the term "exposure" tripping you up?
That can mean topical, membranous, oral exposure, as talked about in the article.
No, but I think it is tripping you up.
Exposure means many different thing depending on the context, but if you actually took the time to read the article you linked, it's clearly referring to external exposure - as in playing in dirt, getting covered in dirt, etc.. Which makes sense as we evolved to be outside - our immune systems need exposure to germs to calibrate properly.
But that is very different to advocating for consumption of dirt, which this article isn't doing. Literally the only part of the article that actually references consumption of dirt is this paragraph...
Which is clearly telling parents to not stress out about accidental consumption. This article is at best neutral about the practice, with a side of caution.
Right!
The article I linked was just the top result of many scientific articles and anthropological studies reiterating the same scientific viewpoint that oral exposure to uncontaminated soil(also known as eating dirt) is not dangerous and potentially-leaning-toward-likely healthy.
Sticking your dirty finger in your mouth =/= intentionally eating a handful of clay from a preferred source that is baked and seasoned with salt and vinegar. Incidental ingestion is not the same thing as intentional consumption. Are you gonna tell your kid that they need to lick their dirty hands clean?
Correct.
Coreect again! great work.
I highly recommend you do not tell kids to "lick their dirty hands clean", which ignores my own and the scientific advice in the linked and other articles regarding eating dirt.
it's also gross and weird.
And how can you confirm that when you didn't read far enough into the article you linked to realise it didn't actually say what you're trying to cite it as?
As @[email protected] said, a child incidentally ingesting dirt while playing outside is very different from intentional Geophagy. Conflating the two and acting like everyone else is stupid for pointing that out doesn't look good on you.
In any case, if you want to discuss an article that is actually about Geophagy, and gives a fairly balanced and objective look into Geophagy and its potential health benefits and risks, I'll give you one.
Certain types of Clays (not just everyday soil) are believed to be able to provide real medical benefits when consumed, mostly in the realm of relieving GI tract conditions ranging from stomach irritation all the way to parasitic infections.
However, that is not the same as saying that regular Geophagy is healthy. Again, certain types of clays can contain minerals in high quantities of Macro and Micro nutrients that the body cannot naturally produce.
But there is a good reason why the cultures where Geophagy is most prevalent are also cultures where there either is or was a high level of regular food scarcity. The bioavailability of these minerals is generally quite low compared to organic sources, and these mineral rich clays often contain an unsafe level of heavy metals to boot - which can cause many, many issues with chronic consumption.
TLDR: Acute consumption of uncontaminated dirt definitely won't hurt you, and can in some cases may actually carry medical benefits - but chronic Geophagy is not the health kick anybody should be looking for - ranging from sort-of harmless to potentially very harmful over a long enough time period.
Assuming other people haven't read an article because you're having trouble understanding it is kinda funny.
maybe you guys can start a reading group with each other rather than trying to make things up or put words in others' mouths; nobody else is having the comprehension problems you share.
I was trying to give you benefit of doubt that you didn't do enough due diligence when grabbing an article to link - hence I tried to throw an olive branch in the form of an actual article on geophagy to discuss.
But seeing how impolitely persistent you are that this article says something that it plainly does not makes me think that you're actually a victim of the Dunning-Kruger effect and that you simply do not understand that the article title "Should we let kids eat dirt?" Isn't literally what the article is about.
Which is to say that if you're so confident that everybody disagreeing with you is wrong, please give us any quote in where it even just implies that eating dirt healthy for children?
And as for everybody agreeing with you? You should really check the like:dislike ratio on your comments before saying that, because they tell a very different story. Literally your only comment with a positive ratio was the first one, and I'd be more than willing to bet that was from people who scrolled by it, felt your comment affirmed their belief, then left without actually reading the article.
thats why its called Humus, and not HUMMUS. eating dirt is a good way to get infections, especially parasites, like raccoon roundworm.
Can those survive the baking process?
I really don't think it was "common" up to the 80s. I remember reading about this in high school around 1970, when it was described as an old practice, uncommon and eccentric but still found among a few rural poor. I remember they used the term "sweet dirt" to describe dirt they considered edible.
That would explain a lot, actually.
peak south USA
Born in the southern US. Great grandparents were dairy farmers in AL. Doesn't get much more rural southern.
Asked my family about this. My granddad had heard that people existed who did this when he was a child (~1940's-50's?) but never saw it nor heard of it since. Nobody else had heard of it at all.
I'm sure it must've happened, but I don't think it was as ubiquitous as the wording here makes it seem.
(Also learned of a family member who ate dirt as a young child, but this was despite the wishes of everyone around him 😂)
Drinking acid out of cans is still super common tho.
Only because they took the drugs out.
I wonder if it’s because of iron deficiency.
I thought it was potassium.
As the old folk saying goes, you gotta eat a peck of dirt before you die
And spiders
I knew some animals would "eat" dirt once in a while, but this sounds like desperate hunger to me
More likely pica which is a symptom of severe iron or other nutrient deficiency.
Man that make some scenes in Yellowjacket make so much more sense...
When I read about this practice a long time ago it was talked about more as an eccentric preference, like gum or tictacs, not a desperate means of nourisment - although it might have been driven by deficiency cravings. And what I've read about it didn't mention baking, so it seems like a great way to ingest parasites.
Are they preparing the subjects that eating dirt is "American", and they should get used to it, as the prices are going to rise even more?
Today I learned I should be eating dirt.
I could use a dirt nap.
I could use a hug
The greatest measure of our society's most tragic failings is that I can't just get on a train/boat asap to give you a hug. Fuel ain't free and community doesn't benefit power, so by neither measure can I afford the day(s) away for affection.
And thus does the loneliness pandemic deepen.
Can we organise a hug chain from [email protected] to [email protected] ?
Hug if true.
I heard on Facebook eating from Donald's diaper cures hanta virus.
My wife told me her mom used to eat a bit of dirt when pregnant.
My grandmother and mother both got pica during childbirth. Grandmother ate a spoonful of dirt and was satisfied, I'd have to call mother but I think she'd just ignore the question these days.
I feel like there's a decent difference between dirt and clay. Like the title made me imagine the same dirt that's in a lawn with bugs and stuff; clay I imagine as being cleaner and more similar to eating wax or play-doh.
You know, this explains a lot about the South...
I'm sure there are plenty of good minerals and some vitamins in dirt... But there are also parasite eggs and bacteria like anthrax...
And toxic minerals.
Explains a lot
Still more normal than a cannibal sandwich. Wisconsin is fucking weird.
In France that's steak tartar.
Sure, but that’s classy. This a fistful of contaminated processed hamburger pressed between two pieces of Wonderbread.
Context?
Wisconsin delicacy
https://www.thrillist.com/eat/nation/cdc-links-raw-meat-cannibal-sandwiches-in-wisconsin-to-e-coli-thrillist-nation
for some reason I am.reminded of Blaze Foley's great song, Clay Pigeons
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uM3YROq_cLY
yeah i think it's similar in effect to fiber maybe? it's a very low-calorie food that kinda cleanes the colon because it pushes everything in it out, while adding no new calories for a while, so the colon has a chance to "cool down" and reduce the bacterial load for a while, so it can heal. i suspect it's probably good for colon health actually.
Dirt is not fiber.
yeah lol but it's similar to fiber in the respect that it's indigestible.
And liquid nitrogen is like water, but you’re not going to drink it.
If my grandma had wheels she'd be a bicycle, or something.
*a bus
Everybody gets to ride.
While stones (clay too?) are not but toxic.
Eat dirt all y'all!
I mean, I drink my urine for the sulphur qualities in alchemy, which are a different thing entirely than what sulphur is in chemistry. Makes my teeth hurt less, I find. Must be good Karma in a yellow spectrum of frequencies. Don't eat your poop though. That's a bad idea, kids.
Very much not true. lol
Edit: unless they meant clay, in which case: sometimes for severe stomach issues.
explains a whole fuckin lot
what does it explain
their weak, twisted mental state and overrarching willingness to espouse a child rapist/trafficker despite his total lack of ability
Naw, the lead in the pipes that bring water to our houses in almost the entirety of the United States explains that. Not to mention that brief period of time when it was in our gas and polluted our air
that's crazy, I didn't know over 100,000,000 people who lived in a bioregion are mentally ill and also advocate for a criminal, damn. Or am I missing the point you were trying to make?
because they are not. just the loudest ones that feel they have to constantly assert their self-percieved "alpha" status and denegrate contrasting ideas
is this problem limited to people who act like that in the South, or people in general who act like that? In other words, if someone was from Oregon or Colorado and was mentally ill and pro-criminal, would you feel the same toward them?
yep
ok
B.S.
Some people eat dirt, some eat heaps of sugar every day, some feast on the carcass of dead animals. To me all three of these are weird. Humans are funny creatures
Even weirder to compare these three extremely different things. "Ah yes eating dirt makes you all WEIRD, unlike my extremely superior vegan self who would never stoop to such pathetic lows. No, of course I don't have friends and I just cannot figure out why."
The vegans will never have the political clout to enforce their lifestyle on everyone. The world is going to hell, but there's that.
I'm just annoyed by zealots of any type. I think veganism is a good choice to make but it's not their place to police everyone else.
I, too am doing what I can to limit my animal consumption. But I want the option.
You ok bro?
Ok enough to not bring up other people's diet apropo of nothing
Meat eaters are so easily triggered. I wonder why
No one cares about your diet, because it's not normal to care about other people's diets.
Veganism isn't a diet, but I'm not surprised you don't know this basic and simple fact
Not that it matters at all what you call it, but it certainly primarily is one.
But sure let's expand the context so we can sealion and distract from the fact that it's extremely weird to look for excuses to publicly write judgy bullshit about what other people eat.