In South Epsteinia they eat dirt. And they only season it with salt and vinegar because they’re white.
That would explain a lot, actually.
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.
peak south USA
Drinking acid out of cans is still super common tho.
Only because they took the drugs out.
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?
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.
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.
Explains a lot
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
We need to bring back sun god sacrifices, then. Maybe that’s why global warming and Stacy won’t go out with me.
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.
I can understand that.
However I grew up in the US south. My response was “Yea… that sounds about right…”
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.
