March 7, 2013 • 25 mins
Chances are you didn't pack mud pies or clay bricks for lunch, but humans - like many animals - are not above pica in their diet. In this episode, Robert and Julie discuss the practice of dirt and mineral consumption and just what impulses are at work.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamp and I'm Julie Techlass. Julie,
When you were a kid, did you ever make mud pies? Yeah?
Do you remember any of your recipes? Um? I just
remember an ordinate amount of them because it was rural Michigan, right,
(00:26):
so there wasn't a lot to do um at that time,
and so I just remember making them by the side
of the house and I used my hands mostly to
shape them though. Cool. Yeah, yeah, we we did as well,
me and my sister's we there was a faucet behind
the house. There's like a concrete slab back there for
some reason, and then just dirt, so we would, uh,
(00:46):
you know, we'd add some water to the to the dirt,
create mud, pack that mud into pie tins and also
many pie tins, and then you you leave them out
there on the slab, they bake, they dry, they become
delicious pies, and that's when you cut a slice and
you eat it, right, you know. I don't know if
I ever did, but I was the older of the kids,
(01:07):
and it's entirely possible that the my younger siblings ate
some of the mud pies. And you know what, that's
not probably a surprise to any parent, because all parents
know that at some point their kid is going to
be chomping on something, some sort of non food item
that they shouldn't be. But it turns out that dirt eating,
(01:27):
which is called pikea, which is actually a lot more
than dirt eating, is so much more common than anybody
has ever really realized, also known as geophagy. If you
want to get fancier, that's pretty fancy. So we've talked
about the benefits of premastication and regurgitation and other podcasts,
so we thought, we know what, why not talk about
dirt eating because it's kind of fascinating stuff. Yeah, Now,
(01:50):
from a very broad viewpoint, there's nothing really that weird
about it. I mean, there are organisms that eat minerals.
The mineral crunching bacteria for instance, um exists. And then
just in any diet, I mean, what do you think
you're doing when you put salt on something. You're adding
a little mineral to your diet. It's it's not crazy. Um. Likewise,
the various medications that we take have some sort of
(02:13):
mineral component too, So there's nothing just off the wall
nuts about eating dirt, eating minerals, eating essentially rocks. Yeah,
and you've probably even witnessed your dog or cat eating
something that's a non food item, especially dogs, especially dogs.
In fact, you might have even witness phyto chopping down
on a chunk of poo before, right, Yeah, especially cat,
(02:35):
this happens. It's called corpor fagia, and it actually means
that your dog could have a vitamin deficiency or even
a touch of O C D. And this is something
we're going to talk about more in humans later. Um,
But before we really kind of get into the meat
of this or the dirt of it, let's talk a
bit about what it is. UM. How it's characterized picka
(02:57):
is actually comes from the Latin word for magpie, since
the magpie bird will eat just about anything, and it's
been thought of as a physiological eating disorder. And as
you have noted, it's also called geo foggia or earth eating.
And in humans it's mainly pregnant women and pre adolescent
(03:19):
children who exhibit pica eating behavior. And again, when we
talk about pica, it's most associated with dirt, but it
can be a lot of different things. It can be clay,
it can be starch. Yeah, I mean I was looking
at some some reports. We're talking about ice. Uh, pregnant
women that experiencing pica, and half of them are eating ice,
which is pago foggia, which is different. I mean eating
(03:42):
a bunch of ices. You're just drinking a lot of water,
except with more crunch, right. Yeah. And some people say
that it's a texture thing and it can be a
stress thing when it comes time soothing on the tongue
and all that. Now with with children, obviously, children, very
young children will try and eat just about anything. That's
why you don't give them micro machine to play with.
That's why you you limit things in their environment. They
(04:04):
can go down their mouth throughout their nose, because it's
just part of the testing out their environment. What can
I eat, what can I not? What goes fits up
my nose, what doesn't quite fit up my nose? Yeah.
But then there's this other little section um that kind
of veers off into other territory, and it's more about
compulsive eating, and that's where you see very unusual non
food items. So we're talking about cigarette ashes, toothpicks, athletic socks,
(04:29):
dust balloons, paint chips, hair, and burnt matches. Oh yeah,
the heroines big you do see that. Yeah, And depending
on the item that's being eaten pick it could lead
to health problems like lead poisoning from the paint chips
or constipation from starch or clay in take because everything
in moderation. Don't go out and eat just a whole
lot of pizza, don't go out and drink in a
(04:49):
xominant amount of water. And if you're going to eat
gym socks, keep it down there like one or two
pairs tops. All right, let's see that's the problem, right,
If you're eating gym socks is probably because you have
compulsion to do so something. Yeah, there's it's a psychological
disorder at that point. Yeah. So this podcast is really
going to talk about two different aspects of pick A.
One is more sort of the cultural aspects and the
(05:11):
nutritive aspects, and the other is going to be more
of the psychological and sort of the compulsion aspect of it.
But I did want to mention that pica has been
around for a long time. The first written account of
human geophagey comes from Hippocrates more than two thousand years ago,
so we've been eating dirt for quite some time. And
(05:31):
I've also read accounts, um, and I don't know to
what degree they were accurate now that I think about them,
but you at least find stories in which individuals are
so hungry that to set to satisfy their hunger on
some level, they will eat non food items. And certainly
there have been plenty of times where food items have
been panned out, like during the Second World War, there
(05:51):
were times when they would add uh, say wood shavings, um,
sawdust to uh to say flower or something, you know,
and it's not really food item, but you can sort
of try and make your food stretched a little a
little farther. By doing that, you're right in filling up
your belly. Right, So if you eat a bunch of clay,
then maybe that can stem off your your hunger for
a little while. Um. So let's talk about the cultural
(06:14):
aspect of this, because in some cultures, both inside and
outside the United States, it really is not uncommon for say,
women to consume clay or dirt during pregnancy, and that's
where we most associate pica. And it's interesting, I didn't
find any sources that really went into this. But by
the mere fact that you see pregnant women engaging in it,
I feel like there's a huge amount of sexism in
(06:36):
our cultural history with pica because women are the ones
that are are eating it, and they're doing so on
they're pregnant, and so in many cultures, I mean, you
you can easily imagine it being explained away as oh,
it's crazy pregnant ladies. Of course they're going to do
crazy things. Um, Whereas as as we're discussing, there are
(06:59):
a number of other possibilities at work here beyond just
mere madness. Yeah, I mean, sometimes it is an aspect
of cultural bonding that that women, pregnant women will eat
clay or some other substance because it's what's done in
that community, and there's this idea that it could save
off symptoms of pregnancy like nausea. And then sometimes it
(07:22):
has to do with vitamin deficiencies, which we'll talk about
a little bit more. Uh. Yeah, but certainly you have
a culture aspect. It's just one huge part there. If
you're if you're in an environment in a culture where
it is accepted that the consuming clay or some sort
of mineral during this time is beneficial and okay, then
obviously you're gonna go for it, whereas in other areas
it's going to be basically a taboo. It's just gonna
(07:43):
be you know, it's who eats dirt? Yeah, it's kind
of like, what what is that cultural norm there? Right? So,
if you're in ken, you are you gonda? Dirt eating
is not going to be so weird because it could
be used in ceremonial or religious practices. But then half
a world away, somebody else is bringing their own cultural
bias to it and they're saying, whoa, look at these
backwards people in this backwards country eating dirt like moron.
(08:04):
But they're just because they have their cultural blinders on,
they don't realize that it is essentially a normal act. Yeah,
let me share this historical tidbit with you because I
think it's really interesting. Um. In Psychology Today's Brain Sense column,
it's pointed out that clay eating and soil eating were
common in the eight hundreds, especially among slaves in the
American South, and then in the fifties and sixties, the
(08:24):
practice was so popular that clay filled lunch bags were
sold at Alabama bus stops for snacks as travelers and
Southerners would male bags of hometown clay to their friends
and relatives who moved north, and in some reports estimate
that clay eating is a daily practice in over two
hundred cultures worldwide. Well, you know, there's something perhaps in
(08:47):
a psychological and almost magical thinking level, where like the
the earth that you were from, you would want to
engage with it like it I mean also reminds me
of a Dracula. When Dracula moved um to London from Transylvania,
he had his native dirt shipped with him because he
needed that dirt to really to be I mean, that
(09:09):
was his home. He had to bring a chunk of
his home with And of course we all do that
when we travel. We want to bring a piece not
the dirt necessarily the grave dirt, but we bring a
piece of the place we were with us, you know.
Well yeah, and and depending on the area that you're in,
you're going to have a different content in terms of
minerals and other things that could potentially be helpful to someone.
(09:30):
We'll talk more about that later. Oh yeah, it kind
of comes right back around into some of the discussions
you hear involving, say, the consumption of local honey to
deal with local pathoges. You know, the the idea that
that you were essentially a local being and the more
you consume locally, the more in tune within with the
local ecosystem you're going to be. So this is a
(09:51):
story really about how widespread and common it is. In fact, um,
you know, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry
decided that pica couldn't be considered abnormal because it was
so widespread and because it was associated with cultural practice
practices as opposed to uh, you know, some sort of
O C D behavior. Now the question becomes, well, what's
(10:14):
the deal with eating things that are non nutritive or
outside of the cultural norm that don't have anything to
do with cultural practices or religious practices? For instance, like
what's the deal with eating something like toilet paper? Um?
Where does where does that all fit into this? Because
this is under the heading of pica, right, and that
(10:35):
the Japanese diet, the Jinnameroni was on. She could eat
all these she could eat all the the tissue paper
or just paper I think she wanted. But you can
only eat paper. That's right, that's right. Um. So other
than in pregnant women, chronic pica or this kind of um,
you know, outside of again the cultural norm, pica is
(10:55):
most common in people with developmental disabilities, including including autism.
This in children, UM and typically the children are between
the ages of two and three when this begins to surface.
Pica also may surface in children who have had a
brain injury affecting their development. And according to Kids Health,
between ten and thirty percent of kids ages one to
(11:17):
six years have the eating disorder of pica. And again,
this is characterized by persistent and compulsive cravings that last
for one month or longer to eat these non food items.
So naturally, if you have this compulsion to eat things
that are not food, it can reak havoc on your
digestive system. And there's there's actually been an uptick in this,
(11:39):
Yeah's a huge one that's studied by the Agency for
Healthcare Research and Quality found that hospitalizations for pica in
a ten year span jumped n That is huge. So
what happens that people are hospitalized for a laundry list
of problems, including obstruction of the bowel or airways from
consuming or choking on stuff like hair, high blood pressure,
(12:01):
high levels of sodium salts in the blood, and abnormal
liver functions because of consuming huge quantities of something like
baking powder. So again, the list of Pika items is.
You know, you'll get some lists than their twenty items
long thirty items long, and they range anywhere from like
you know, chalk again, hair, you know, chumping, chomping on
(12:22):
match sticks or yeah, or people trying to get into
the Guinness Book. There. You have a certain subset of
people who are always trying to do things like can
I pass an entire toy train through my digestive system
piece by piece? So they'll take something big, take it up.
I think people have done this with cars before, their ideas.
Can I consume a car piece by piece and pass
(12:42):
it through my body? Does it come out altogether on
the other end, Yeah, it just naturally comes out whole.
I don't know how they do it, but I mean
maybe it's sort of a sense of power in that.
It's like, like you're not so tough, Folkswagen. I can
eat you in small pieces, but I can still eat you.
I don't know. When I hear at things like that.
I always think that that's one of those things where
you feel like you have a measure of control over
(13:04):
your life, right, So everything else could be spiling, spiraling
out of control, and then you begin to obsess on
this one thing that you can control. So it's sort
of interesting and that if you look at um pica
and you look at it in the O C D spectrum,
very well maybe related to that, especially because they've taken
studies of people with pica and they've given them they've
(13:27):
given them the S s R eyes the serotonin uptake inhibitors, right,
that helps you balance out the serotonin in your brain.
These are largely a class of antidepressants, and they have
found that that is really effective for people with pica,
helps to curb their behaviors or their compulsions to do this.
So there's this idea that it is existing on that
that spectrum. All right, we're gonna take a quick break
(13:49):
and when we come back, we're going to press on
with with dirt eating, with mineral eating and uh and
some of the the the vitamin deficiency elements of this.
All right, we're back, and uh, you know, as we
mentioned earlier, eating dirt eating things that are essentially the earth.
(14:14):
Are not that crazy when you think about the fact
that we put salt in our food. We use various
minerals in our cooking and in our medication, So we're
doing it. Everyone is doing some of this anyway, perhaps
just in a more elegant fashion. Well, I think about
stomach upset, right. Are you familiar with kaopect tape? Yes? Okay, Well,
that has something called kalin in it, and kalin is
(14:36):
really helpful. It's in clay and it can combat diarrhea
because it forms a protective coating in the lining of
the intestine and binds bacteria there. So in some parts
of Nigeria you see people eating this kaleon night as
kind of clay. Yeah, the idea that you're eating this
to ramp up the protection in your gut against something
that you just state. You see various animals that do
(14:57):
this after they have consumed um a toxic plant or
a semi toxic plant, something that if they just ate
it by itself, it would just become an increasingly more
of a problem with cause diarrhea, etcetera. And uh, I've
read some explanations of this where they essentially say that
it's it's us refusing to be bossed around by plants,
because plants are ultimately have it figured out. I mean,
(15:20):
there are plants that have that grow everywhere now because
they have and I hate to personify evolution too much,
but or personify plants, but they've essentially figured it out. It's,
you know, they know people need potatoes, they know people
need uh um, you know, illicit substances that they produce,
and it's they kind of they gained the system to
their advantage. So vegetation that has a fruit that is
(15:44):
toxic or slightly toxic, toxic uh, they're telling us where
we can eat them, when we can eat them, how
much we can eat them, and who can eat them.
And so the the ability to consume clay um or
some other substance uh is essentially our way of saying, actually,
I'm going to decide when I'm going to eat you
and how much of you I am going to eat,
right because I figured out a way you're gaming me,
(16:05):
and I've figured out a way to game you so
that I can still get some sort of food resource. Yeah,
that's the whole, the whole evolutionary battle in essence. Now,
um Pica is thought to be associated with low levels
of iron in some people, um calcium, zinc, and vitamin C,
and pica may appear in as many as half of
(16:26):
those with iron deficiency and has been reported in about
twenty of pregnant women, and a study in France found
that among seventy nine patients with iron deficiency anema excuse
me anemia reported the regular ingestion of non food items,
while only nine percent of the non amnemic subjects in
(16:49):
the control report of this behavior. So already you're seeing
here that there's there's a pretty good amount of data
that is saying that people are sometimes seeking it out
and sometimes not even uh you know, unbenounced themselves right now,
because the body is saying we need this, right, we
need an intake of this substance or this substance. We
need more iron, Go find it and instinctively we know
(17:12):
where iron occurs. Right, And that's when when you think
about pica, you tend to think again back to pregnant
women or children who there there are cities that show
that they do have a low level of these vitamins
are and are perhaps seeking it out. Yeah, children are growing,
they need some they need more vitamins to to grow.
You see that in the animal kingdom as well. For instance,
(17:33):
dear during antler growth period, there's a lot of tissue
growth going on pretty rapidly, so you'll see them eat
calcium and magnesium rich soils during that time. Yeah. And
if you think that that the pregnant women and the
children are just sort of, you know, an anomaly or
went off, this is really interesting. There's a study that
was published in the Quarterly Review for Biology, and again
(17:56):
it looked at pica and pregnant women in pre adolescent
children and it found that they are also the most
sensitive to parasites and pathogens. So Cornell University researcher Sarah Young,
who is also the studies lead author, she put together
a database of more than four hundred and eighty cultural
accounts of geofagi and the database includes as many details
(18:19):
as possible about the circumstance, circumstances under which the dirt
was consumed and by whom. And then they found again
that not only was it pregnant women and kids who
engaged in the dirt eating, it was far more prevalent
in tropical climates because this is where you have many
more food born microbes that are that are very abundant
(18:40):
and uh, and they find that these two groups of
people tended to eat the dirt during a gastro intestinal distress.
So the story that's painted here is that this dirt
eating is helping to keep those pathogens and those parasites
at bay in those different cultures and protecting against these
two groups that are so sensitive to them. And I
(19:02):
thought this was interesting young who said in her study,
we hope readers agree that it's time to stop regarding
Geoflagi as a bizarre, non adaptive gustatory mistake. So in
this realm, you see it not as you know, something
that's a compulsion or perhaps part of the O C
D spectrum, but more again lining up with what the
(19:23):
body is needing or trying to guard it stuff against,
or as you say, gaming what's around you, right, gaming
those parasites or pathogens. And as we discussed before, I
mean it also comes back to understanding the mind body connection,
realizing that our that there's more going on in our bodies,
that our bodies not just a magic throne that our
brain rides in, but it is part and partial to
(19:43):
who we are, and the more we understand about its
cravings and its needs and its desires, uh, in terms
of in this case in terms of minerals um and
and Clay's and whatnot. The more we understand how we work,
and then we know that that this kind of behavior
is not something that stands outside of ourselves, but it
is a part of the experience. Yeah, and I like
this topic too, because you do start to look at
(20:04):
it in these very different ways, the cultural aspect way
the body and just what it can do in game
for itself and how nature can game you as well.
And then of course the psychological element to it um
where you see it with kids in autism and so
on and so forth. Yeah, now we'd be remiss if
we did not mention um some of the dirt aficionados
out there, is, particularly in the wine tasting world, that's right. Yes,
(20:27):
Now this is a French term, and your French is
better than than mine. It is. Actually, I always think
I'm not sure if I know that the t E
R R O I R, which of course means earth. Yeah,
and this is the idea that someone who really knows
their wine, they get a sense of the earth in
which the grapes were grown. So it's kind of that
Dracula thing. Again, this the earth that the grapes came
(20:51):
from that were transformed into this this elegant wine. And
there's a sense of that and and certainly, I mean
it makes sense to a large point because the the
actual components of earth vary from one from one location
to the next. Anyone who's ever engaged in some serious
planting of trees, like we're my wife and I are
currently having a few fruit trees put in our backyard.
(21:14):
Um did a trade with somebody and uh, and when
you know, we're learning that, you know, there are certain
trees that grow in Georgian soil. And then you have
to also think about you know, city levels and whatnot.
I mean, there's a lot that goes into dirt. Not
all dirt is just dirt. There are many different types.
So so it makes sense. I've also heard merroir mentioned
(21:37):
and this is uh the idea that the ocean uh
the body of water from which of saltwater from which
something is uh is harvested um seafood, that that also
plays into its taste, and that it's the it's part
of the reason that people are so into different sea
salts that you have, you don't just have you can
you know, you can go to the grocery store and
you can buy just straight up sea salt, but you
(21:58):
can also buy a wide variety of sea salts from
various parts of the world. The idea being that the
salt the of of that ocean, of that particular corner
of the ocean, has a distinctive impact on taste. So
the next time you're at a dinner party, I dare you,
as you are quaffing your wine to say that the
you think the soil came from a low acidity grape
(22:20):
grown under the tendrils of the sun, you can say
tendrils of the sun. Tendrils of the sun. Yeah, and uh,
perhaps even note that the meat was salted with something
from the Pacific Northwest when the winds of the Pacific Northwest.
I like it, you do, all right? All right? Well,
(22:41):
you know we're kind of pressed for time today, so
I'm gonna skip calling the robot over here with its uh,
with its listener mail. We will get back to that,
because I know we have a lot of disgusting snail mail,
like not not snail mail in the terms that it
came in um through the post office, but rather snail mail,
and then it's about slugs and snails and gastropods being disgusting. Uh.
And I know you want to hear me read it
and and gag, So we will get to that. I
(23:03):
will real quick mention to address a couple of things
that my wife, who is a who's a regular listener,
brought up. Uh. First of all, in a previous episode,
I may have sometimes I make these obviously I'm really
into certain TV shows. In this episode, I made a
thirty Rock reference earlier, and I at least explained it.
In a previous episode, I used the term reagan Ing,
(23:25):
and I just think I did need to remind everyone
that that that I'm not trying. I'm not dragging any
kind of politics into the the episode. But in a
particular episode of of thirty rocky conservative character um Jack
Donneghie us his reagan ing to describe a day in
which everything is going right and he's nailing every task
before him. So, in case anybody were wondering what in
(23:47):
the heck I was talking about, I did owe you
an explanation, and that is the explanation. And then likewise,
multitasking Uh. A classic example of multitasking that I did
not bring up is the use of an electric toothbrush. UM.
I regularly fight this, uh, this particular temptation, and so
does my wife to grab the electric toothbrush, start using
(24:07):
it and then do other things like go check email
or do some other morning task while brushing. And if
you do that, of course, you end up not really
brushing all that well, you're just kind of holding the
brush in your mouth, and it's just kind of a
an in feed procedure, and likewise you're probably not doing
a great job of the other thing either, so and
you're gonna get cavities exactly. So it's the cautionary tale
(24:31):
for everyone out there. So if you have some insight
on any of these topics, but particularly uh dirt, the
consumption of dirt, the tasting of of a of a
foreign soil in a in the wine, or perhaps you're
a vampire and you'd like to have your your native
soil shipped in so you may sleep in it. Everything's
open for conversations, so let us know. You can find
(24:53):
us on Facebook, you can find us on tumblo. We're
stuff to blow your mind on both of those, and
on Twitter we go by the handle blow the mind,
and you can always drop us a line and blew
the mind at discovery dot com For more on this
and thousands of other topics. Is It How Stuff Works
(25:13):
dot com
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamp and I'm Julie Techlass. Julie,
When you were a kid, did you ever make mud pies? Yeah?
Do you remember any of your recipes? Um? I just
remember an ordinate amount of them because it was rural Michigan, right,
(00:26):
so there wasn't a lot to do um at that time,
and so I just remember making them by the side
of the house and I used my hands mostly to
shape them though. Cool. Yeah, yeah, we we did as well,
me and my sister's we there was a faucet behind
the house. There's like a concrete slab back there for
some reason, and then just dirt, so we would, uh,
(00:46):
you know, we'd add some water to the to the dirt,
create mud, pack that mud into pie tins and also
many pie tins, and then you you leave them out
there on the slab, they bake, they dry, they become
delicious pies, and that's when you cut a slice and
you eat it, right, you know. I don't know if
I ever did, but I was the older of the kids,
(01:07):
and it's entirely possible that the my younger siblings ate
some of the mud pies. And you know what, that's
not probably a surprise to any parent, because all parents
know that at some point their kid is going to
be chomping on something, some sort of non food item
that they shouldn't be. But it turns out that dirt eating,
(01:27):
which is called pikea, which is actually a lot more
than dirt eating, is so much more common than anybody
has ever really realized, also known as geophagy. If you
want to get fancier, that's pretty fancy. So we've talked
about the benefits of premastication and regurgitation and other podcasts,
so we thought, we know what, why not talk about
dirt eating because it's kind of fascinating stuff. Yeah, Now,
(01:50):
from a very broad viewpoint, there's nothing really that weird
about it. I mean, there are organisms that eat minerals.
The mineral crunching bacteria for instance, um exists. And then
just in any diet, I mean, what do you think
you're doing when you put salt on something. You're adding
a little mineral to your diet. It's it's not crazy. Um. Likewise,
the various medications that we take have some sort of
(02:13):
mineral component too, So there's nothing just off the wall
nuts about eating dirt, eating minerals, eating essentially rocks. Yeah,
and you've probably even witnessed your dog or cat eating
something that's a non food item, especially dogs, especially dogs.
In fact, you might have even witness phyto chopping down
on a chunk of poo before, right, Yeah, especially cat,
(02:35):
this happens. It's called corpor fagia, and it actually means
that your dog could have a vitamin deficiency or even
a touch of O C D. And this is something
we're going to talk about more in humans later. Um,
But before we really kind of get into the meat
of this or the dirt of it, let's talk a
bit about what it is. UM. How it's characterized picka
(02:57):
is actually comes from the Latin word for magpie, since
the magpie bird will eat just about anything, and it's
been thought of as a physiological eating disorder. And as
you have noted, it's also called geo foggia or earth eating.
And in humans it's mainly pregnant women and pre adolescent
(03:19):
children who exhibit pica eating behavior. And again, when we
talk about pica, it's most associated with dirt, but it
can be a lot of different things. It can be clay,
it can be starch. Yeah, I mean I was looking
at some some reports. We're talking about ice. Uh, pregnant
women that experiencing pica, and half of them are eating ice,
which is pago foggia, which is different. I mean eating
(03:42):
a bunch of ices. You're just drinking a lot of water,
except with more crunch, right. Yeah. And some people say
that it's a texture thing and it can be a
stress thing when it comes time soothing on the tongue
and all that. Now with with children, obviously, children, very
young children will try and eat just about anything. That's
why you don't give them micro machine to play with.
That's why you you limit things in their environment. They
(04:04):
can go down their mouth throughout their nose, because it's
just part of the testing out their environment. What can
I eat, what can I not? What goes fits up
my nose, what doesn't quite fit up my nose? Yeah.
But then there's this other little section um that kind
of veers off into other territory, and it's more about
compulsive eating, and that's where you see very unusual non
food items. So we're talking about cigarette ashes, toothpicks, athletic socks,
(04:29):
dust balloons, paint chips, hair, and burnt matches. Oh yeah,
the heroines big you do see that. Yeah, And depending
on the item that's being eaten pick it could lead
to health problems like lead poisoning from the paint chips
or constipation from starch or clay in take because everything
in moderation. Don't go out and eat just a whole
lot of pizza, don't go out and drink in a
(04:49):
xominant amount of water. And if you're going to eat
gym socks, keep it down there like one or two
pairs tops. All right, let's see that's the problem, right,
If you're eating gym socks is probably because you have
compulsion to do so something. Yeah, there's it's a psychological
disorder at that point. Yeah. So this podcast is really
going to talk about two different aspects of pick A.
One is more sort of the cultural aspects and the
(05:11):
nutritive aspects, and the other is going to be more
of the psychological and sort of the compulsion aspect of it.
But I did want to mention that pica has been
around for a long time. The first written account of
human geophagey comes from Hippocrates more than two thousand years ago,
so we've been eating dirt for quite some time. And
(05:31):
I've also read accounts, um, and I don't know to
what degree they were accurate now that I think about them,
but you at least find stories in which individuals are
so hungry that to set to satisfy their hunger on
some level, they will eat non food items. And certainly
there have been plenty of times where food items have
been panned out, like during the Second World War, there
(05:51):
were times when they would add uh, say wood shavings, um,
sawdust to uh to say flower or something, you know,
and it's not really food item, but you can sort
of try and make your food stretched a little a
little farther. By doing that, you're right in filling up
your belly. Right, So if you eat a bunch of clay,
then maybe that can stem off your your hunger for
a little while. Um. So let's talk about the cultural
(06:14):
aspect of this, because in some cultures, both inside and
outside the United States, it really is not uncommon for say,
women to consume clay or dirt during pregnancy, and that's
where we most associate pica. And it's interesting, I didn't
find any sources that really went into this. But by
the mere fact that you see pregnant women engaging in it,
I feel like there's a huge amount of sexism in
(06:36):
our cultural history with pica because women are the ones
that are are eating it, and they're doing so on
they're pregnant, and so in many cultures, I mean, you
you can easily imagine it being explained away as oh,
it's crazy pregnant ladies. Of course they're going to do
crazy things. Um, Whereas as as we're discussing, there are
(06:59):
a number of other possibilities at work here beyond just
mere madness. Yeah, I mean, sometimes it is an aspect
of cultural bonding that that women, pregnant women will eat
clay or some other substance because it's what's done in
that community, and there's this idea that it could save
off symptoms of pregnancy like nausea. And then sometimes it
(07:22):
has to do with vitamin deficiencies, which we'll talk about
a little bit more. Uh. Yeah, but certainly you have
a culture aspect. It's just one huge part there. If
you're if you're in an environment in a culture where
it is accepted that the consuming clay or some sort
of mineral during this time is beneficial and okay, then
obviously you're gonna go for it, whereas in other areas
it's going to be basically a taboo. It's just gonna
(07:43):
be you know, it's who eats dirt? Yeah, it's kind
of like, what what is that cultural norm there? Right? So,
if you're in ken, you are you gonda? Dirt eating
is not going to be so weird because it could
be used in ceremonial or religious practices. But then half
a world away, somebody else is bringing their own cultural
bias to it and they're saying, whoa, look at these
backwards people in this backwards country eating dirt like moron.
(08:04):
But they're just because they have their cultural blinders on,
they don't realize that it is essentially a normal act. Yeah,
let me share this historical tidbit with you because I
think it's really interesting. Um. In Psychology Today's Brain Sense column,
it's pointed out that clay eating and soil eating were
common in the eight hundreds, especially among slaves in the
American South, and then in the fifties and sixties, the
(08:24):
practice was so popular that clay filled lunch bags were
sold at Alabama bus stops for snacks as travelers and
Southerners would male bags of hometown clay to their friends
and relatives who moved north, and in some reports estimate
that clay eating is a daily practice in over two
hundred cultures worldwide. Well, you know, there's something perhaps in
(08:47):
a psychological and almost magical thinking level, where like the
the earth that you were from, you would want to
engage with it like it I mean also reminds me
of a Dracula. When Dracula moved um to London from Transylvania,
he had his native dirt shipped with him because he
needed that dirt to really to be I mean, that
(09:09):
was his home. He had to bring a chunk of
his home with And of course we all do that
when we travel. We want to bring a piece not
the dirt necessarily the grave dirt, but we bring a
piece of the place we were with us, you know.
Well yeah, and and depending on the area that you're in,
you're going to have a different content in terms of
minerals and other things that could potentially be helpful to someone.
(09:30):
We'll talk more about that later. Oh yeah, it kind
of comes right back around into some of the discussions
you hear involving, say, the consumption of local honey to
deal with local pathoges. You know, the the idea that
that you were essentially a local being and the more
you consume locally, the more in tune within with the
local ecosystem you're going to be. So this is a
(09:51):
story really about how widespread and common it is. In fact, um,
you know, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry
decided that pica couldn't be considered abnormal because it was
so widespread and because it was associated with cultural practice
practices as opposed to uh, you know, some sort of
O C D behavior. Now the question becomes, well, what's
(10:14):
the deal with eating things that are non nutritive or
outside of the cultural norm that don't have anything to
do with cultural practices or religious practices? For instance, like
what's the deal with eating something like toilet paper? Um?
Where does where does that all fit into this? Because
this is under the heading of pica, right, and that
(10:35):
the Japanese diet, the Jinnameroni was on. She could eat
all these she could eat all the the tissue paper
or just paper I think she wanted. But you can
only eat paper. That's right, that's right. Um. So other
than in pregnant women, chronic pica or this kind of um,
you know, outside of again the cultural norm, pica is
(10:55):
most common in people with developmental disabilities, including including autism.
This in children, UM and typically the children are between
the ages of two and three when this begins to surface.
Pica also may surface in children who have had a
brain injury affecting their development. And according to Kids Health,
between ten and thirty percent of kids ages one to
(11:17):
six years have the eating disorder of pica. And again,
this is characterized by persistent and compulsive cravings that last
for one month or longer to eat these non food items.
So naturally, if you have this compulsion to eat things
that are not food, it can reak havoc on your
digestive system. And there's there's actually been an uptick in this,
(11:39):
Yeah's a huge one that's studied by the Agency for
Healthcare Research and Quality found that hospitalizations for pica in
a ten year span jumped n That is huge. So
what happens that people are hospitalized for a laundry list
of problems, including obstruction of the bowel or airways from
consuming or choking on stuff like hair, high blood pressure,
(12:01):
high levels of sodium salts in the blood, and abnormal
liver functions because of consuming huge quantities of something like
baking powder. So again, the list of Pika items is.
You know, you'll get some lists than their twenty items
long thirty items long, and they range anywhere from like
you know, chalk again, hair, you know, chumping, chomping on
(12:22):
match sticks or yeah, or people trying to get into
the Guinness Book. There. You have a certain subset of
people who are always trying to do things like can
I pass an entire toy train through my digestive system
piece by piece? So they'll take something big, take it up.
I think people have done this with cars before, their ideas.
Can I consume a car piece by piece and pass
(12:42):
it through my body? Does it come out altogether on
the other end, Yeah, it just naturally comes out whole.
I don't know how they do it, but I mean
maybe it's sort of a sense of power in that.
It's like, like you're not so tough, Folkswagen. I can
eat you in small pieces, but I can still eat you.
I don't know. When I hear at things like that.
I always think that that's one of those things where
you feel like you have a measure of control over
(13:04):
your life, right, So everything else could be spiling, spiraling
out of control, and then you begin to obsess on
this one thing that you can control. So it's sort
of interesting and that if you look at um pica
and you look at it in the O C D spectrum,
very well maybe related to that, especially because they've taken
studies of people with pica and they've given them they've
(13:27):
given them the S s R eyes the serotonin uptake inhibitors, right,
that helps you balance out the serotonin in your brain.
These are largely a class of antidepressants, and they have
found that that is really effective for people with pica,
helps to curb their behaviors or their compulsions to do this.
So there's this idea that it is existing on that
that spectrum. All right, we're gonna take a quick break
(13:49):
and when we come back, we're going to press on
with with dirt eating, with mineral eating and uh and
some of the the the vitamin deficiency elements of this.
All right, we're back, and uh, you know, as we
mentioned earlier, eating dirt eating things that are essentially the earth.
(14:14):
Are not that crazy when you think about the fact
that we put salt in our food. We use various
minerals in our cooking and in our medication, So we're
doing it. Everyone is doing some of this anyway, perhaps
just in a more elegant fashion. Well, I think about
stomach upset, right. Are you familiar with kaopect tape? Yes? Okay, Well,
that has something called kalin in it, and kalin is
(14:36):
really helpful. It's in clay and it can combat diarrhea
because it forms a protective coating in the lining of
the intestine and binds bacteria there. So in some parts
of Nigeria you see people eating this kaleon night as
kind of clay. Yeah, the idea that you're eating this
to ramp up the protection in your gut against something
that you just state. You see various animals that do
(14:57):
this after they have consumed um a toxic plant or
a semi toxic plant, something that if they just ate
it by itself, it would just become an increasingly more
of a problem with cause diarrhea, etcetera. And uh, I've
read some explanations of this where they essentially say that
it's it's us refusing to be bossed around by plants,
because plants are ultimately have it figured out. I mean,
(15:20):
there are plants that have that grow everywhere now because
they have and I hate to personify evolution too much,
but or personify plants, but they've essentially figured it out. It's,
you know, they know people need potatoes, they know people
need uh um, you know, illicit substances that they produce,
and it's they kind of they gained the system to
their advantage. So vegetation that has a fruit that is
(15:44):
toxic or slightly toxic, toxic uh, they're telling us where
we can eat them, when we can eat them, how
much we can eat them, and who can eat them.
And so the the ability to consume clay um or
some other substance uh is essentially our way of saying, actually,
I'm going to decide when I'm going to eat you
and how much of you I am going to eat,
right because I figured out a way you're gaming me,
(16:05):
and I've figured out a way to game you so
that I can still get some sort of food resource. Yeah,
that's the whole, the whole evolutionary battle in essence. Now,
um Pica is thought to be associated with low levels
of iron in some people, um calcium, zinc, and vitamin C,
and pica may appear in as many as half of
(16:26):
those with iron deficiency and has been reported in about
twenty of pregnant women, and a study in France found
that among seventy nine patients with iron deficiency anema excuse
me anemia reported the regular ingestion of non food items,
while only nine percent of the non amnemic subjects in
(16:49):
the control report of this behavior. So already you're seeing
here that there's there's a pretty good amount of data
that is saying that people are sometimes seeking it out
and sometimes not even uh you know, unbenounced themselves right now,
because the body is saying we need this, right, we
need an intake of this substance or this substance. We
need more iron, Go find it and instinctively we know
(17:12):
where iron occurs. Right, And that's when when you think
about pica, you tend to think again back to pregnant
women or children who there there are cities that show
that they do have a low level of these vitamins
are and are perhaps seeking it out. Yeah, children are growing,
they need some they need more vitamins to to grow.
You see that in the animal kingdom as well. For instance,
(17:33):
dear during antler growth period, there's a lot of tissue
growth going on pretty rapidly, so you'll see them eat
calcium and magnesium rich soils during that time. Yeah. And
if you think that that the pregnant women and the
children are just sort of, you know, an anomaly or
went off, this is really interesting. There's a study that
was published in the Quarterly Review for Biology, and again
(17:56):
it looked at pica and pregnant women in pre adolescent
children and it found that they are also the most
sensitive to parasites and pathogens. So Cornell University researcher Sarah Young,
who is also the studies lead author, she put together
a database of more than four hundred and eighty cultural
accounts of geofagi and the database includes as many details
(18:19):
as possible about the circumstance, circumstances under which the dirt
was consumed and by whom. And then they found again
that not only was it pregnant women and kids who
engaged in the dirt eating, it was far more prevalent
in tropical climates because this is where you have many
more food born microbes that are that are very abundant
(18:40):
and uh, and they find that these two groups of
people tended to eat the dirt during a gastro intestinal distress.
So the story that's painted here is that this dirt
eating is helping to keep those pathogens and those parasites
at bay in those different cultures and protecting against these
two groups that are so sensitive to them. And I
(19:02):
thought this was interesting young who said in her study,
we hope readers agree that it's time to stop regarding
Geoflagi as a bizarre, non adaptive gustatory mistake. So in
this realm, you see it not as you know, something
that's a compulsion or perhaps part of the O C
D spectrum, but more again lining up with what the
(19:23):
body is needing or trying to guard it stuff against,
or as you say, gaming what's around you, right, gaming
those parasites or pathogens. And as we discussed before, I
mean it also comes back to understanding the mind body connection,
realizing that our that there's more going on in our bodies,
that our bodies not just a magic throne that our
brain rides in, but it is part and partial to
(19:43):
who we are, and the more we understand about its
cravings and its needs and its desires, uh, in terms
of in this case in terms of minerals um and
and Clay's and whatnot. The more we understand how we work,
and then we know that that this kind of behavior
is not something that stands outside of ourselves, but it
is a part of the experience. Yeah, and I like
this topic too, because you do start to look at
(20:04):
it in these very different ways, the cultural aspect way
the body and just what it can do in game
for itself and how nature can game you as well.
And then of course the psychological element to it um
where you see it with kids in autism and so
on and so forth. Yeah, now we'd be remiss if
we did not mention um some of the dirt aficionados
out there, is, particularly in the wine tasting world, that's right. Yes,
(20:27):
Now this is a French term, and your French is
better than than mine. It is. Actually, I always think
I'm not sure if I know that the t E
R R O I R, which of course means earth. Yeah,
and this is the idea that someone who really knows
their wine, they get a sense of the earth in
which the grapes were grown. So it's kind of that
Dracula thing. Again, this the earth that the grapes came
(20:51):
from that were transformed into this this elegant wine. And
there's a sense of that and and certainly, I mean
it makes sense to a large point because the the
actual components of earth vary from one from one location
to the next. Anyone who's ever engaged in some serious
planting of trees, like we're my wife and I are
currently having a few fruit trees put in our backyard.
(21:14):
Um did a trade with somebody and uh, and when
you know, we're learning that, you know, there are certain
trees that grow in Georgian soil. And then you have
to also think about you know, city levels and whatnot.
I mean, there's a lot that goes into dirt. Not
all dirt is just dirt. There are many different types.
So so it makes sense. I've also heard merroir mentioned
(21:37):
and this is uh the idea that the ocean uh
the body of water from which of saltwater from which
something is uh is harvested um seafood, that that also
plays into its taste, and that it's the it's part
of the reason that people are so into different sea
salts that you have, you don't just have you can
you know, you can go to the grocery store and
you can buy just straight up sea salt, but you
(21:58):
can also buy a wide variety of sea salts from
various parts of the world. The idea being that the
salt the of of that ocean, of that particular corner
of the ocean, has a distinctive impact on taste. So
the next time you're at a dinner party, I dare you,
as you are quaffing your wine to say that the
you think the soil came from a low acidity grape
(22:20):
grown under the tendrils of the sun, you can say
tendrils of the sun. Tendrils of the sun. Yeah, and uh,
perhaps even note that the meat was salted with something
from the Pacific Northwest when the winds of the Pacific Northwest.
I like it, you do, all right? All right? Well,
(22:41):
you know we're kind of pressed for time today, so
I'm gonna skip calling the robot over here with its uh,
with its listener mail. We will get back to that,
because I know we have a lot of disgusting snail mail,
like not not snail mail in the terms that it
came in um through the post office, but rather snail mail,
and then it's about slugs and snails and gastropods being disgusting. Uh.
And I know you want to hear me read it
and and gag, So we will get to that. I
(23:03):
will real quick mention to address a couple of things
that my wife, who is a who's a regular listener,
brought up. Uh. First of all, in a previous episode,
I may have sometimes I make these obviously I'm really
into certain TV shows. In this episode, I made a
thirty Rock reference earlier, and I at least explained it.
In a previous episode, I used the term reagan Ing,
(23:25):
and I just think I did need to remind everyone
that that that I'm not trying. I'm not dragging any
kind of politics into the the episode. But in a
particular episode of of thirty rocky conservative character um Jack
Donneghie us his reagan ing to describe a day in
which everything is going right and he's nailing every task
before him. So, in case anybody were wondering what in
(23:47):
the heck I was talking about, I did owe you
an explanation, and that is the explanation. And then likewise,
multitasking Uh. A classic example of multitasking that I did
not bring up is the use of an electric toothbrush. UM.
I regularly fight this, uh, this particular temptation, and so
does my wife to grab the electric toothbrush, start using
(24:07):
it and then do other things like go check email
or do some other morning task while brushing. And if
you do that, of course, you end up not really
brushing all that well, you're just kind of holding the
brush in your mouth, and it's just kind of a
an in feed procedure, and likewise you're probably not doing
a great job of the other thing either, so and
you're gonna get cavities exactly. So it's the cautionary tale
(24:31):
for everyone out there. So if you have some insight
on any of these topics, but particularly uh dirt, the
consumption of dirt, the tasting of of a of a
foreign soil in a in the wine, or perhaps you're
a vampire and you'd like to have your your native
soil shipped in so you may sleep in it. Everything's
open for conversations, so let us know. You can find
(24:53):
us on Facebook, you can find us on tumblo. We're
stuff to blow your mind on both of those, and
on Twitter we go by the handle blow the mind,
and you can always drop us a line and blew
the mind at discovery dot com For more on this
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(25:13):
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