My wife told me her mom used to eat a bit of dirt when pregnant.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
for some reason I am.reminded of Blaze Foley’s great song, Clay Pigeons
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 😂)
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.
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.
Most carnivore humans are b12 deficient.
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.
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.
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!
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.
Methocobalomin is.
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.
To learn more about earth-eating in animals and humans, check out the Wikipedia page on geophagia.
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.
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’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.
Was it also potato and apple or is “scrapple” a general purpose term for an omelette made out of whatever scraps are available?
I’m Creole. I’m from the swamp
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.
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)
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!
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.
Thanks for citing this, but it still doesn’t explain why this custom has developed.
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 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.
What rational reason is there for people to eat cereal for breakfast?
Cereal was designed to prevent masturbation.
That’s why I rub out a fat one first and THEN eat the cereal.
Then why are they called Apple Jacks?!
I’d say it does a pretty good job. I hardly ever jack off while eating Cheerios in the morning.
Cream of Wheat, not cream of meat.
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?
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.”
Oh I agree.
The cause of the cultural behavior usually has a purpose though.
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.
Astrophage, eat your heart out.
Nah, mate, that’s cardiaphage you’re thinking of
