The Art and Science of Eating Dirt

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Eating earth, or geophagy, (jee-oh-fay-jee) is universal. You do it in a refined manner every time you chug Kaopectate, Di-Gel, Rolaids, Mylanta, Maalox, or Donnagel-PG. In essence, diarrhea and acid-stomach upset are keeping alive a now culturally concealed taste for earth. In these products, the active ingredients of clays (kaolin) or certain earths (calcium carbonate) have been isolated from the earth mass, but that slippery, earthy feel still stays in the mouth.

Geophagy spans the material-to-spiritual spectrum. Bioregionalists would love the Siberian tribe that carried small balls of local earth on their wanderings, nibbling them along the way, the taste a reminder of home. It has been said in Sri Lanka for 60,000 years that the sole food of Brahma (the originator of all being) was the earth itself.

Every year, a million Central American pilgrims climb into the eastern Guatemalan hills to commune with the shrine of the Black Christ, Our Lord of Esquipulas. From vendors they buy holy clay tablets mined by the men from quarries surrounding the shrine then laboriously crafted by the women at home. The tablets are eaten mostly by women to ensure a safe pregnancy but are taken for everything from shipwrecks to divorce. The clay’s components may well rival contemporary pharmaceuticals for calming upset stomachs and providing minerals, but for the believers, faith drives geophagy.

Swedish and Finnish grandparents may tell stories of clay used as a bread extender during famines. Among Japan’s Ainu people, a recipe for clay-lump soup was probably a nutrient supplement. In Africa, women turn to special earths to help provide minerals (particularly calcium) during pregnancy. The Mende and Kissi women of West Africa gather special earths that have been processed and concentrated by termites, which concentrate the levels of beneficial minerals. In Java and Sweden, a wetland clay filled with near-microscopic invertebrates (Infusoria) is a prized microfood. To counteract toxins and poisons, the Aymara of Peru make a neutralizing clay dip for feral potatoes that belong to the poisonous nightshade family. “Oak peoples” who eat large quantities of acorns can either leach them or mix them with clay to neutralize the tannic acids. From California to Sardinia, acorn-meal-and-clay breads still survive.

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