DailyDirt: Eating Actual Dirt

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

People eat a lot of weird things: bugs, fungus, all kinds of fermented stuff. However, the craving for dirt is a real phenomenon, and people do actually eat various kinds of dirt. There's some evidence that our ancient ancestors -- 2 million years ago -- (aka homo habilis) ate dirt. Dirt is even sold for eating in the USA right now. If you'd like to learn more about eating dirt, here you go. If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.
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Filed Under: dirt, eating, edible, food, geophagy, kaolin, pica, white dirt


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  • icon
    Paul Renault (profile), 12 Apr 2014 @ 4:23am

    Kaolite-eating a mystery?

    It used to be one of the two main ingredients in Kaopectate. It helps relieve mild diarrhea, and likely helps deal with some toxins. Kaolin-eating, in smallish quantities, is not pica.

    A local well-stocked bulk- and strange-food store sells 120g bags of 'Pure Kauw' imported from Ghana - along with the usual fufu, akyeke, ognono, and egusi. Y'know, your basic everyday foods.

    Observant Africans and South Americans may have watched parrots eating it, and found it helpful.
    See here:
    http://cogweb.ucla.edu/Abstracts/Diamond_99.html

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    omar manejwala, 29 Apr 2014 @ 10:21am

    Much of this can be traced to iron deficiency

    This is fascinating stuff and accurate. People do crave dirt
    (among other strange things). Most commonly this is from iron deficiency anemia, but other conditions can lead to it as well. Cravings for bizarre foods and the craving to eat non-foods are strange but real phenomena.

    So, its not just tech dirt people crave hehe.

    Omar Manejwala, M.D.
    www.cravingbook.com

    link to this | view in chronology ]


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