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I knew some animals would "eat" dirt once in a while, but this sounds like desperate hunger to me
thats why its called Humus, and not HUMMUS. eating dirt is a good way to get infections, especially parasites, like raccoon roundworm.
Can those survive the baking process?
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.
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.
we're getting punked, right? this is citogenesis? someone just made it up? does anyone have a primary source??
NYT is a reliable source.
Absolutely. Always on the right side of history.
Pica is the name to Google
I don't have a source, but when I was younger there were a few black kids in my school from super poor families, and their parents would put sugar and spices in clay for them for breakfast. It had some flavor and filled them up, even if there wasn't much nutritional value.
Then they finally added breakfast (instead of just lunch) to the free meal program for poor families when I was in late elementary, and they'd just eat at school.
A lot of kids only reliably get meals from school. In college, I got involved in a program with the food bank where we'd go to schools during their last period on Fridays and place backpacks full of food in the lockers of children from the poorest families. The blue bags we used were cheap and obvious, and we'd frequently find the previous week's bag still full. The kids were too embarrassed to get on the bus with the bags that identified them as poor.
So we had a fundraiser to buy 3 cheap but normal identical backpacks for each kid in the program. One for their everyday use, and 2 for the weekend food (we'd drop off a new one and take the previous week's bag for refilling). That way they'd swap their regular bookbag in their locker for the food bag and nothing looked unusual on the bus ride home.
I hadn't thought about that in a while. I need to make a donation to the food bank.
Also - give the food bank money, not food. They can buy food cheaper than you can, and they know what they actually need.
It had some flavor and filled them up
Ok, but why not, for example, wood, straw? Them are mostly inert and even somewhat healthy. I don't know about clay specifically but eating pebbles exposes you to high levels of toxic minerals.
People who are soo poor they've resorted to eating clay to feel full may not be in a position to know the healthiest way to temporarily the body into thinking it's not hungry.
Tyfys 🫡. I will need to join my local food bank as well
My wife told me her mom used to eat a bit of dirt when pregnant.
Hopeful they did it far from outhouses.
Dirt is loaded with parasites even today, in countries with poor sanitation.
one famous incident is a boy ate some sand/dirt that had raccoon roundworms in it. balisyascaris is probably the most lethal roundworm out there. the house episode was based on it. since it also is lethal to other species too, besides the raccoon itself.
That's what the cooking is for I imagine
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My grandparents are from Yazoo city, and my mom used to talk about how her grandmother and aunts used to eat dirt, specifically red dirt from a hill on the farm. I've never seen it, and never even thought about it until seeing this post.
There is a lot of authoritative speculation in the comments on this one
I mean there was this one kid who ate dirt (he was white tho) but we all thought he was a bit touched in the head. He was the kid who pulled his underwear down to his ankles at the urinal to piss at school. I understand the joys doing that brings, but like get a fucking stall dude. I can't remember if he was also the kid who ate worms but he ate dirt so brain memory confused gets.
This means you all need to eat more dirt to make up for poor brain crippled JoshuBob. Two out of ten Veterinarians recommend you eat 8 cups of humus a day to maintain a luscious, rich sheen on your scales. Do you want to disappoint your veterinarian or get chitin pestilence? That's what I thought. Chitin pestilence it is.
I've learned about Medicinal clay from my wife. You can buy it in regular shops everywhere in Germany. She takes it dissolved in water if she has bad inflammation.
I have yet to try it.
It's called "Heilerde" for anyone who's interested
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this post was submitted on 18 May 2026
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