May/June 2022 (Volume 14, Issue 3)
By Arvid Huisman
Here in Iowa we pay attention to dirt. In fact we’re proud of our dirt.
Our state has some of the richest and most productive soil in the world and we like to brag about that. One thing you seldom hear, however, is Iowans talking about eating dirt.
A few years before I retired, a conversation in our house went something like this:
Me: “I ate dirt today.”
My wife: “You what?”
Me: “I ate dirt.”
My wife: “What did it taste like?”
Me: “Dirt.”
As this cerebral exchange continued I got the “rolling-eyes” look several times.
The table conversation at a Christmas party a few weeks earlier turned to unusual foods. One of my co-workers said she had eaten caviar; another said she liked oysters. I acknowledged I had eaten escargot.
Another co-worker asked if any of us had eaten dirt. None of us had eaten dirt. She said she does.
While I had read about the practice, I had never met someone who does it. My co-worker was a class act so I pressed for more information.
She explained that her family brought the practice of eating clay from deep beneath the surface to Iowa from their original home in the Deep South. Every once-in-a-while, she said, she craves a bite of the substance.
After answering a few more questions, she offered to bring me some dirt to eat. “That would be great,” I said insincerely.
I had nearly forgotten her offer when she reminded me a few days later that she had some edible dirt at her desk. Not wanting to appear a sissy, I opened a plastic bag to find a lump of dried clay.
“Just take a small bite off the end,” my colleague said.
I did as she instructed.
“Oh,” she admonished, “you bit off the wrong side. The good stuff is on the other side.”
I took a small bite off the “good side.” I couldn’t detect a difference.
“What do you think?” she asked.
I told her it reminded me of when I was a kid and pulled a carrot out of the garden and ate it without washing off all the dirt. It tasted like dirt.
Intrigued (but not enthralled), I did some research on edible dirt.
Scientists call the practice of eating dirt “geophagy” (pronounced jee-OFF-uh-jee.) The activity goes back for centuries and was known among ancient Greeks as well as some Native Americans. The habit is usually limited to women, especially women who are pregnant or of childbearing age.
Geophagy is common in sub-Saharan Africa and is believed to have been brought to the U.S. by African slaves who tried to compensate for their nutritionally deficient diets by eating vitamin-enriched clay. In the U.S. these days the practice is most common among African-American women in the rural South. Worldwide, however, it is practiced by members of all races, social classes, ages and genders.
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