Why People Eat Dirt … No kidding. Dirt.

Posted On June 13, 2011

Eww. Dirt? Well it turns out that the practice of eating dirt has a long history, and a new study suggests that it could possibly, in principle, maybe kinda sorta might be healthy in some way.

Never mind the e coli that’s in the dirt, and the parasites that the doggies dropped off.

The cultural practice of eating dirt is called “geophagy,” and recent research in the

June issue of The Quarterly Review of Biology proposes that this dirty habit may protect the body against invaders such as germs and parasites.

Wait. By eating things with germs and parasites in it? Really?

It’s true that people have eaten dirt for thousands of years (reports come from almost every country, in fact), according to report lead author Sera Young, a researcher at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y.

To find out why, Dr Young and her colleagues examined more than 480 cultural reports of dirt-eating and then looked for patterns. They found that people eat dirt (typically boiled first) even when there’s plenty of food around, and they don’t tend to eat enough to make them full.

Are they eating Gourmet Dirt?
As for nutrition, the most common form of dirt eaten, a type of clay, isn’t loaded with minerals and may actually impede the uptake of nutrients by the digestive tract!

Who are the main Dirt Conesseurs?

Geophagy is most common among women in early pregnancy, and pre-adolescent children, and both of these categories of people are especially vulnerable to parasites and germs.

Thus, this circumstantial explanatory stab in the dark led these scientists to propose that Mud Pie eaters may be eating it in order to reduce parasites? Bolstering the theory is the fact that dirt-eating is most common in tropical climes where foodborne pathogens are most common, and people often seek out dirt for eating when they are in some kind of gastrointestinal distress.

“We hope this paper stimulates [more] research,” the study authors write. “More importantly, we hope readers agree that it is time to stop regarding geophagy as a bizarre, non-adaptive gustatory mistake. With these data, it is clear that geophagy is a widespread behavior in humans that occurs during both vulnerable life stages and when facing ecological conditions that require protection.“

Eating Dirt Has Long, Maybe Healthy, History – healthfinder.gov