Why do people eat earth and clay?

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Eating earthis surprisingly common. In some countries it is considered an eating disorder, in others it is strongly encouraged.

The BBC Future columnist wondered why people want to literally have land?

Sheila grew up in Cameroon where she first became addicted to kaolin. “I went to elementary school then,” she says. “I often had to buy it for my aunt who used to eat kaolin.” Sheila is currently studying in France.

According to Sheila, for many of her compatriots, this substance is still part of their daily diet. For some, it even develops into a kind of addiction.

Kaolin is not uncommon: it can be bought in almost any market in Cameroon. It is not a prohibited substance or a new drug. This is a local clayey rock, land. Eating the earth, or geophagyhas been common in Cameroon for many years. This phenomenon is described in detail in documents from colonial times.

"They say that all [children] eat the earth," writes the perplexed author of Notes on the Batanga Tribe. "Even the children of missionaries who are unfamiliar with hunger."

According to Sera Young, a geophagy expert at Cornell University (USA), this phenomenon has a very long history in many countries around the world. Young has been studying this behavior for nearly twenty years.

Together with colleagues, she published a large-scale study in which more than 500 documents from different eras were analyzed. Scientists have come to the conclusion that geophagy is widespread throughout the world. Cases of eating land have been reported in Argentina, Iran and Namibia. In addition, the researchers were able to identify several important trends.

Firstly, most of the time, people eat land in the tropics. Second, the propensity for geophagy is manifested mainly in children (which is probably predictable) and pregnant women. However, the reason for the lower rates in some countries may be a lack of information due to cultural taboos.

"People eat inedibles more often than you think," Young says, "and it's happening right next to us."

As an example, she cites the story of the famous opera diva from New York, who, during pregnancy, greedily ate the earth, but kept it in a terrible secret.

Young herself became interested in geophagy, collecting material for her research in Tanzania. “I have interviewed local pregnant women about iron deficiency anemia,” she says.

"When I asked one of these women about what she likes to eat during pregnancy, she replied," Twice a day, I eat earth from the walls of my hut."

For Young, this came as a big surprise. “It went against everything I was taught,” she says.

Indeed, in Western medicine it has long been accepted to consider geophagy as a pathology. It is classified as a form of perverse eating behavior, along with deliberately eating glass or bleach.

However, in Cameroon, eating land is not associated with any taboos. The situation is the same in Kenya. Young was very surprised to find out that in Kenya you can buy packets of soil with a variety of nutritional supplements, including black pepper and cardamom.

The state of Georgia (USA) produces high quality white clay that can be bought on the Internet. The packages are marked that the product is not intended for human consumption, but everyone knows why they buy it.

Young asks if there are African grocery stores near my home in South London. I answer that there is. "Just go to one of them and ask for clay for pregnant women. It will definitely be there."Half an hour later, I walked out of a store called Products from Africa with a briquette in my hands. I gave 99 pence (about 95 rubles) for it.

I carefully put a bite into my mouth. The clay instantly absorbs all moisture and adheres to the palate like peanut butter. For a second I can taste smoked meat, but I quickly realize that it's just clay and nothing else.

I wondered why so many people have this addiction.

"Everyone has their own reason," says Monique, another Cameroonian student. "Some people just want to, and some use clay to get rid of nausea and stomach pain. Clay is believed to aid digestion."

Is that really true? Maybe geophagy is not a disease, but a method of treatment?

There are three explanations for humans eating earth, and Monique's answer echoes one of them. Not all earth is the same. Kaolin belongs to a separate group of clay rocks that are most popular among food lovers.

Clay has good bonding properties, so Monique's pain relieving effects may be due to its ability to bind or block toxins and pathogens in the digestive system.

Experiments on rats and observation of monkeys have shown that animals can eat inedible substances when poisoned. In some cuisines around the world, there is a tradition of mixing food with clay to remove toxins and make it more palatable. For example, in the preparation of acorn bread in California and Sardinia, crushed acorns are mixed with clay to neutralize tannin, which gives them an unpleasant taste.

The second hypothesis is based more on intuition: the clay may contain nutrients that are absent in the food we are used to. Anemia is often associated with geophagy, so eating iron-rich soil can be explained by an attempt to compensate for the lack of iron.

In addition, there is the assumption that geophagy is a reaction to severe hunger or micronutrient deficiencies, as a result of which something inedible may seem attractive. It follows from this that such behavior is maladaptive, that is, eating the earth does not do any good. On the other hand, according to the first two hypotheses, there are adaptive reasons behind geophagy. This also explains the geographic prevalence of this phenomenon.

“We assumed that the tropics were the most likely to do so because they had the highest concentration of pathogens,” Young says.

In addition, children and pregnant women may have an increased need for nutrients, as they have weaker immunity. On the other hand, the desires of pregnant women are often given too much importance.

"Women think they need to be pampered during pregnancy," says Julia Horms, associate professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Albany (USA). "There are many myths associated with pregnancy: they say, you need to eat for two and give the fetus everything it needs. But they, as a rule, do not find scientific confirmation."

According to Horms, these desires are largely cultural and have little to do with biology.

If eating earth is a cultural tradition, then Cameroonian women will crave it as much as Europeans and Americans crave chocolate or ice cream.

Not everything we want is good for us. Nevertheless, the desire to eat the earth is found even in cultures where this is not so important.

Experiments with animals show that this phenomenon can at least partially be explained by adaptive biological reasons. When the earth is eaten by elephants, primates, cattle, parrots and bats, it is considered normal and even beneficial.

But when it comes to humans, scientists equate this behavior with an eating disorder. Undoubtedly, in some cases, geophagy is closely associated with mental illness, but it is difficult to draw a clear line between illness and norm. In 2000, the U. S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry stated that consuming more than 500 mg of earth per day could be considered pathological. But even the Agency's specialists admitted that this value is conditional.

"Many sources describe geophagy as a cultural phenomenon, and I am not inclined to consider it abnormal behavior," says Ranit Mishori, professor of family medicine and practitioner at the Georgetown University Medical Center (USA). "However, if it is combined with other clinical symptoms, I talk to the patient about how to quit this habit."

Eating earth certainly has its downsides. The main concerns are soil borne diseases and clay toxicants. In addition, there is the possibility that eating clay and earth does not correct micronutrient deficiencies, but rather causes them.

Geophagy can also become a habit, an impulsive behavior that has to be hidden from others.

“Sometimes it’s appropriate to use the same terms when describing geophagy as in drug addiction,” Young says.

Of course, geophagy can simply be considered a disgusting childhood habit, a quirk of pregnant women, or an exotic addiction of people from distant countries. But none of these explanations will be one hundred percent correct. Moreover, such beliefs can lead to the fact that a person prone to geophagy may feel like an outcast because of their "unnatural" desires.

To fully understand this phenomenon and determine what consequences it leads to, it is necessary to test all these hypotheses in practice, taking into account biomedical and cultural factors.

"I'm not saying everyone should eat three tablespoons of soil a day," Young says. "But that this practice can be harmful has yet to be proven."