In gas stations and flea markets all around the southeastern United States , you could find a composition board box full of blocks of white clay . They ’re unmarked , but the people attend for them know what they ’re for . In Kenya , you’re able to grease one’s palms reddish malicious gossip on the street , imprint into fiddling pellets that look like baby carrots . In Uganda , you could buy " Yankee Doodle " brand filth at the grocery store . A site calledEarth ’s Clay Storesells clays from all over the world and ships them aright to your nursing home . But what are you hypothesise to do with it when it get to you ?
Well , you eat up it .
Pica
You might have a undefined sense that you ’ve heard of people eating grunge before — pregnantwomen , maybe?Picais the overarching terminus for craving and consume things that are n’t food . In the 6th century , a Dr. name Aëtius of Amida notice people adhere non - food item in their sassing , the waymagpies(pica , in Latin ) pluck up random objects in their beaks . He figured these people had whole indiscriminate appetence for just any one-time affair and termed the demeanour after the scavenger .
It turns out , pica is kind of a misnomer , because picacravingsare in reality very specific , but accord to theDiagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders ( DSM ) , it includes a range of behaviors . Some masses crave gem clip , batteries or coin — these craving are view by the DSM to be on the spectrum of obsessive - compulsive upset , schizophrenia , clean mental illnesses — but pica can also include craving for raw starch ( amylophagy ) , icing ( pagophagy ) and grime ( geophagy ) .
Geophagyis one form of pica found in almost every body politic in the world .
" I was surprised when I first saw it , " says Sera Young , assistant professor in theDepartment of Anthropologyat Northwestern University . " I was read significant women ethnography in Zanzibar , and I asked a womanhood what she wipe out when she ’s significant , and in Swahili she said , ' Every day I take earth from this wall and rust it . ' I was just learning Swahili and was pretty good at it , but I really did n’t think I was understanding correctly . My research assistant was like , ' Yeah , you heard right ! ' "
Young ended up writing her Ph.D. thesis on geophagy , and deliver the goods the Margaret Mead Award in 2013 for her book " Craving Earth " which detailed her research about geophagia practices worldwide . In her research , Young tracked down medical literature ; diachronic texts ; enquiry on brute behavior , soil scientific discipline and parasitology , and add up to the determination that there arefour explanationsas to why people eat dirt .
1. It’s Aberrant Behavior
The most common and longest - running conventional wiseness about geophagia is that thereisno good reason for it — it ’s a pathology , it ’s aberrant behaviour of some unknown origin .
" It ’s the ' women , they know not what they do ' explanation , " says Young . " It was fundamentally white men save about this for the retiring few hundred year , and it was give the sack as aberrant . It ’s true , it is often women , and most often meaning cleaning lady whoespeciallydon’t have a go at it what they ’re doing . And it ’s most common around the equator , in the tropical zone , so of course brown peopledefinitelydon’t know what they ’re doing . We can rebut this — there are so many species of brute that go to great jeopardy to get clay and charcoal , like thecolobus monkeythat steal oxford grey from villagers . "
But even so , we know very niggling about geophagy because for centuries scientist were stubbornly miss curiosity about it .
2. Dirt Is Mother Nature’s Multivitamin
The first explanation scientist have come up with to excuse why hundreds of yard of the great unwashed worldwide crave and eat shite is that there must be something useful in the clay — micronutrient of some variety .
" The Mother Nature ’s multivitamin account is a really intuitive one , " says Young .
But no die . For appetiser , although the clay her study participants in Zanzibar were eating was tinged with red , indicating branding iron content , investigation into whether that branding iron could be plunge and used by the body add up up empty . Plus , according to Young , masses by and large prefer whiter the Great Compromiser : If you pay a geophagist the choice of snacking on Georgia white kaolin or the cherry-red clay found on Zanzibar , they ’ll almost always pick the white kaolin , which does not contain atomic number 26 .
3. Dirt Provides Protection from Germs
The account that eat dirt is somehow protective does n’t make much visceral sense — after all , we ’re supposed to bide by from stain , wash our paw , cleanse our wearing apparel , take off our shoes when we insert the house . If you ’ll recall from the last meter you read the Bible , even the snake had to eat the detritus as punishment for talking Eve into eating the forbidden Malus pumila .
But corpse face masks suck the impurity from your cutis , and they ’re made of grease , correct ? According to Young , eating Lucius Clay might cake the inside of the gut , in much the same way a mud mask coats the face . But why would somebody need an bowel clay mask ? The response is , trade protection from pathogens and harmful chemicals .
Most toxin enter your body in the things you rust . You support the food and it ’s absorb through the wall of your bowel and into your blood stream — wads of pathogen and chemicals get to us in this way , too . Clays can bind to the mucin ( mucus ) layer inside your intestine , forming a roadblock .
" In rabbits , clay has been demo to stimulate the production of mucin , create a roadblock to potential harmful pathogens or chemical getting into your bloodstream , " says Young . " It can also bind with whatever harmful affair you ’re exhaust . For example , in the Andes , citizenry corrode wild potato which contain these toxic chemicals called glycoalkaloids . But after they dim the white potato in remains , they become secure to run through . "
But while run through clay might protect from pathogens and harmful chemicals , which isespecially important for pregnant fair sex , there ’s something of aGoldilocks Principleat period of play here : you want to shield yourself from the harmful stuff , but you also do n’t want to protect yourself from the nutrient you need . For example , if you eat on a steak that ’s full of both bioavailable smoothing iron and pathogens , but you eat up clay at the same prison term , the atomic number 26 will become resile by the stiff , and wo n’t be absorbed by your gut . Although the clay might be protecting you from pathogen to some extent , it ’s also preventing you from absorb the nutrients .
4. Dirt Makes Your Tummy Feel Better
The third account for why people eat grime or mud is that it might help with sickness , disgorgement and diarrhoea by coating the stomach . After all , a numeral of anti - diarrhoeic treatments have kaolin in them . Kaolin place the puts the Kao- in Kaopectate !
How Cravings Start
Though the reasons for geophagy are still rather mystical , the question remains : How do people retrieve out they have a craving for soil in the first place ?
" There are instance of people receive these cravingsde novo — without having stress it before , " says Young . " But the fact is , if you grow up pick up your mom sending your pappa to go get this accurate dirt , or see your aunties are eating filth , you see it in the stores for sales event , you ’re much more likely to engage in it . "
But Young also accent that geophagy is far more common than we realize — although it ’s perceive as an exotic behaviour that happen in far - away places , people are eat clay all the clock time in the U.S.
" People do n’t care to talk about it or admit it . When I ’m doing ethnographical interviews , I always ask ' how much earth do you corrode ? ' instead of ' do you eat earth ? ' , because so many people have assert they do n’t eat it , and after tell me they do but they rest because ' I did n’t want you to think I was inadequate . ' "
