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.
Astrophage, eat your heart out.
To learn more about earth-eating in animals and humans, check out the Wikipedia page on geophagia.
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.
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.
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.
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!
Potatoes naturally were toxic nightshade (all parts). To be domesticated they had to be eaten with clay, which absorbs the toxin. There are still some varieties eaten with clay.
I’ve often heard some version of the suggestion that “kids should eat a pound of dirt by the time they’re 5,” to have healthy immune systems. The suggestion, as I’ve always understood it, is that kids should spend a lot of time outside, eating dirt incidentally from constantly being in nature, having dirty hands and dirt under their nails, tripping and falling in the dirt, breathing dirt kicked up while running around and rough housing, etc. Getting micro-exposure to lots of germs early through play to built up a strong immune response. I’ve never understood it to mean literal dirt eating, but now I wonder if that might be the origin.
Thank you that makes more sense, the title I took to be incorrect. When I work outside I often get dirt in my mucus when I blow my nose.
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.
The cause of the cultural behavior usually has a purpose though.
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
What rational reason is there for people to eat cereal for breakfast?
Cereal was designed to prevent masturbation.
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.
Yeah pour it in the trousers!
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?
That’s true for a lot of customs.
Oh I agree.
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.
Dirt (especially clay) is often rich in iron and magnesium. Humans used to use ceramic pottery extensively until recently. It wouldn’t surprise me if there were some benefits.
So here in Russia there’s such a thing as dachas, it’s small plots of land with non-winterproof (sometimes not) small houses (sometimes more like a chickhouse for a human) on them, people go there at summer to have barbecues, grow stuff, have fun.
We have that, it’s on a place with a lot of clay (good for growing apple trees, too) and I have always felt weird from eating and drinking anything with local water (from the well, boiled).
That is, I have ASD and BAD, and my mental condition is always different when being there a lot with that water, it’s both more intense emotions, but also less like BAD symptoms. Also that somehow makes me feel full faster. And stronger.
Honestly it’s as if in the city I had BAD, but there I had BPD. I become more touchy-feely there. Still it feels good and human, just not very safe.
But I’ve also read that water with such contents is not too good for one’s kidneys, shouldn’t overdo it. Better use filters.
The point is, I do feel as if my nutrition were better when using that water. Even a few portions of rice a day with lots of tea feel quite different there. But might also be the cleaner air, it’s a relatively low place, though not a swamp, and a very pretty one.
Several of my great aunts and uncles did this. And yeah, after they moved away they would have small boxes of dirt shipped to them from family that stayed behind.
White, Volga German descended farmer people, moved from the Midwest to the West Coast US.
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.
It’s tubers, not 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?
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.
Still less feces than McDonalds.
If I were that Southerner, and some professor guy comes along, I would tell him such stories too.
My grandmother and mother both got pica during childbirth. Grandmother ate a spoonful of dirt and was satisfied, I’d have to call mother but I think she’d just ignore the question these days.
It’s still common to eat clay to get the minerals, help with digestion or reduce hunger in parts of Africa see the Contemporary practices section: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geophagia
I remember making mud pies as a kid. We never ate them though.