From time to time, information appears on the Internet and on television about unusual people who calmly eat stones and earth, and on a regular basis. Strange, the laws of physics and chemistry have not been canceled? How do they do it?
Let's take a closer look …
Here's one example:
Pakkirappe Hunagundi is a resident of India. He is only thirty years old. As a child, he became addicted to eating bricks and stones. Over the past twenty years, he has eaten at least three kilograms of this delicacy daily. At the same time, the man feels very well, his teeth are all intact and there are no problems with the digestive system. The Indian plans to earn a little extra money, thanks to his non-standard gastronomic preferences.
In addition to stones and bricks, the Indian diet also includes mud and sand. To get rid of the habit of eating so little appetizing things for ordinary people, he does not succeed in any way.
I first tasted the brick of Pakkirappe Hunagundi at the age of ten.
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The man does not complain about his health at all.
His teeth are strong and white, despite such a strange diet.
Pakirappa's mother absolutely does not like her son's taste preferences. She had repeatedly persuaded him to stop eating sand and stones.
But no persuasion works. According to Pakirappa himself, bricks, stones and mud are the tastiest things for him in the world. And even if he has to choose between them and the divine nectar, he will still be more attracted by the "heavy", but so beloved food.
Doctors say that the man suffers from Pick's disease. Its main symptom is the craving for eating inedible things. This eating disorder is very rare.
The Indian is already quite famous not only in his native village, but also beyond its borders.
He plans to go on a trip around the country in order to demonstrate to everyone his skills and thus earn some money.
Here's another example:
45-year-old American, a kindergarten teacher for children with special needs, does not hide her shocking love of absorbing stones - she does not even wash them before eating, but sucks on the dirt, rolling the stones in her mouth like candy.
The woman skillfully handles a large hammer, with which she crushes large stones as she splits nuts.
“I like stones with a taste of earth the most,” she shares her “gourmand” secrets.
In fact, Teresa Widener has a rather serious disorder of behavior, which is called geophagy, or in her case the term lithophagy will be more accurate, that is, the desire to eat exactly stones.
Teresa has been doing this for more than 20 years - according to her, she allegedly suffers from anemia, the level of hemoglobin in her body is lowered, and rubble and stones rich in iron improve her condition.
In fact, her explanation does not stand up to criticism, because a full-blooded woman with a dense physique does not in any way resemble a skinny victim of anemia, and the iron in the gravel is no more than, say, in the lunar soil.
Teresa Wiedener became a guest of a talk show on one of the American TV channels, where she gladly ate several small stones right in front of the television cameras, and skillfully crushed a large stone right there in the studio into several small ones, which she also absorbed in front of the viewers.
Meanwhile, the unusual addiction that made Teresa famous throughout the country can lead her to stomach bleeding, as well as to infection with dangerous parasites - only psychiatrists can help a woman, but she does not see or does not want to see anything unusual in her "hobby".
And here's another example:
In the Indonesian village of Taban, the ground underfoot serves not only as raw materials for bricks and pottery, but also for preparing snacks. This village is the only one in the world that produces Ampho, food that is made from gravel-free black soil from nearby rice fields. Although there is no medical evidence, residents believe that the soil is an effective pain reliever and even pregnant women are advised to eat it, as it is believed to have a very beneficial effect on the skin of the fetus.
There are no official recipes for cooking earth for food, but in general terms it looks like this: first, they beat the solid mass with sticks, then scrape off the rolls with a bamboo knife, which are baked and smoked in clay pots for half an hour. After such simple procedures, the soil can be ingested.
As they say, that one is good, then another death!
Tana-ampo: tortillas eaten on spicy. Java, the chemical composition of which is clay, lying on a tertiary layer of lime, filled with microscopic animals.
(Source: "Dictionary of foreign words included in the Russian language." Chudinov A. N., 1910)
Rasima, who, like many Indonesians, has only one name, makes Ampo every day and sells it in the local market. She can earn up to $ 2 per day in addition to her family's total agricultural income.
Rasima says: “I don't know when the Ampo production became our family business. All I know is that my great-grandmother was engaged in this, my grandmother continued, then my mother, and now I continue the tradition. I work in rice fields looking for banana and teak leaves, so I am constantly in touch with nature."
Those who have tried Rasima's products are delighted with it. They say that the earth tastes just super, it has an amazing creamy structure and a wonderful bouquet.
“Cooking ampo is a family tradition that was passed down to me from my mother, and from her mother to her, and so on,” says Rasima, 53, the only seller of pancakes with unusual filling.
Thousands of African women eat STONES every day. The reason for this unusual phenomenon lies in the ever-increasing need of the African female body for iron, calcium and other minerals. Young girls eat stones mainly before and during pregnancy. Some girls just get hooked on this fascinating action, like on drugs, constantly chewing stones in their mouths. Doctors even have a name for this unusual African disease - Pica - women use stones.
Soft stones, rich in minerals and iron, can be bought at any shop on the streets of bustling Africa. Between spices and packages of mineral water, on the shelves of mini-markets, and even large African stores, you can find stones. In plastic bags, among traditional foodstuffs, there are stones of various sizes, colors and tastes. The packaging is different - from 100 grams to half a kilo. These stones, which are eaten only by women, contain an increased concentration of salt, which is necessary for the vital functions of the body, iron, the lack of which is felt in Africa and, most interestingly, stones are also consumed by vegetarians.
So, is it possible to eat stones and earth? Of course, there are stones that are good for food - this is table or rock salt, saltpeter, magnesian to Glauber's salt and others. We take many salts together with food or use them in the form of various medicines. Currently, there is a whole science that studies minerals of natural origin (salts and their aqueous solutions, rocks, including varieties of clay and sand), which a person consumes for food.
During the famine in the Volga region in 1920-1921. in many localities, geology was widespread, and clay was even sold in the markets as an edible product. The Russian geologist P. L. Dravert wrote that a large amount of decomposition products of organic substances were used in the clay that the inhabitants of the Samara province ate. As it turned out, these were sapropels, which have been used for food since ancient times.
Dravert mentioned the Indians of Venezuela who lived in the Orinoco river basin, who for two or three months when the river flooded were cut off from the mainland and were forced to eat only silty clay, which was roasted over a fire. On average, one person ate about two glasses of silt daily.
Edible clay was also known in India as "Mughal clay". In New Zealand, clays served as a seasoning for meat. The Maori people ate the greyish-yellow earth of volcanic origin, the so-called native oatmeal. In the southern United States, at the mouth of the Mississippi River, clay was also used for food, in the countryside it was called "Franulin's mud."
In Java, it is believed that clays facilitate childbirth and reduce complications, therefore, in its absence, women eat shards of earthenware. Pregnant women from a tribe living on the slopes of Mount Kenya in Africa eat "white soil" from ant piles, or "black soil" and termite mounds.
Geoscience has turned out to be commonplace in Iran, where even during normal harvest times edible rocks are also sold in bazaars along with all kinds of food products; clay from Magallat and Giveh. Clay from Magallat is a white mass, greasy to the touch, sticking to the tongue, which the inhabitants of those places eat with special pleasure.
The consumption of certain types of minerals is associated with religious rites. For example, in China, diatomaceous earth was very popular; it was called "black food" or "earthy rice". Diatomites are rocks composed primarily of siliceous diatom remains that are used as medicine and food. In ancient times, it was believed that diatomaceous earth is of supernatural origin and is the food of immortal dragons, so its use should have a beneficial effect on the health and well-being of believers.
Ancient sources mention other rocks that helped to satisfy not only hunger, but also thirst, had a beneficial effect on breathing, regulated the work of internal organs, and were used to neutralize poisons, treat dropsy, jaundice, and eye diseases. In Africa, clay is still used to treat gastrointestinal diseases. The Arabs and ancient Greeks stopped vomiting with clay.
Over time, people began to appear who successfully made money by adding minerals to common foods. There is such a mineral - barite, or heavy spar, which is very easily ground into flour. It is cheap and heavy, and therefore is often mixed with various goods that are sold by weight - especially wheat flour. At one time in Germany, the falsification of flour reached such proportions that the production of barite was even banned in this country. Counterfeiting of various foods with minerals turns out to be extremely common throughout the world. Back in the Middle Ages, minerals were mixed with flour, mainly to increase its weight and sell it at a higher profit. Various white minerals were added to the flour, pre-grinding them into powder: barite, chalk, gypsum, sand, etc.
Various researchers reported about "lithophagy" - stone-eating, describing the life of different tribes and peoples who eat clay. Civilized people do not feed on earth, but sometimes some women and children have to do this during pregnancy. What for? They themselves cannot even explain - instinct forces them to compensate for the chemical substances that are missing in the body.
Scientists have described numerous facts of consumption by the indigenous population of minerals of clay origin as medicines, some of which are in the reference books of traditional medicine. For example, it is noted that after oxygen, the most abundant element on Earth is silicon. Deficiency of silicon in the human body causes a decrease in the body's resistance to various diseases.
Lack of silicon leads to hair loss, softening, brittle bones, kidney and liver stones. It affects the flexibility of the periosteum, tendons, cartilage, blood vessels. In case of joint diseases, bone fractures, you need to take care of a sufficient amount of silicon in food. And for better bone healing, it is recommended to eat bran bread and other food products that contain a high content of silicon.
Previously, silicon entered the human body naturally, when a person walked without shoes and was in direct contact with soil and minerals containing silicon. With the improvement of human social conditions, such contacts with nature are becoming less and less.
Another reason the indigenous people eat clay is that clay soils often contain minerals such as zeolites, which are capable of removing harmful substances from the body.
Minerals are not only used by humans. Stones are known to be swallowed by many birds, fish and animals. It has been established that animals on salt licks consume not only salt in the ground, but also the soil itself. Many hunters, for example, noticed that during the rut, the meat of a deer or other "animal" is tasteless. During this period, the male does not eat anything, although he spends a lot of energy due to his fat reserves.
When fat is broken down, harmful nitrogenous substances are released, which poison the body of the animal, and it, eating the earth, removes these harmful substances from its body. The liver takes an active part in fat metabolism, where fats are oxidized with the formation of energy necessary for the vital activity of the body.
Geophagy, human eating of earth, ash, mud, etc., is a phenomenon that has long occupied the minds of scientists. "People who eat the earth" were first noted by Hippocrates, that is, 2000 years ago. Since then, cases of geophagy have been noticed more and more often, and now, according to solid sources, there is not a single continent and not a single country where this strange phenomenon has never been noted. Despite the relative prevalence of the phenomenon, scientists still have not been able to agree on the reasons that induce people to eat the earth. However, among the many versions, there are three that are most credible. The first suggests that eating inedible soil helps to cope with acute hunger: although the body does not receive any nutrients at the same time, it is possible to get rid of acute hunger cramps for a while. The second hypothesis, on the contrary,talks about nutrients that can only be extracted from the earth; trace elements like iron, zinc or calcium act as them. Finally, the third hypothesis passes off the eating of the earth as a kind of protection that protects us from the action of pathogenic microorganisms and plant toxins.
Researchers from Cornell University (USA) decided to find out which of the three hypotheses is more like the truth. They undertook an analysis of 480-plus cases of geophagy reported from missionary times. An upcoming article in the Quarterly Review of Biology reports the results of this study. In short, the first hypothesis turned out to be untenable, because cases of eating the earth were noted even when there was plenty of food. In addition, people ate small amounts of earth that could not fill the stomach and drown out hunger. The theory of obtaining nutrients from the soil is also not justified - the data indicate that the most preferred substrate for geophagy is clay, which is poor in trace elements. By the way, if this were a way to replenish calcium reserves,geophagy would flourish among children and the elderly when calcium needs are high, but statistics do not support this. Some have found a relationship between geophagy and anemia, but studies have shown that people continue to eat land even if the iron deficiency is made up. Moreover, clay generally tends to bind nutrients from food more likely, making them unavailable for absorption.
As a result, scientists settled on the fact that the eaten clay performs a protective function. The phenomenon of geophagy is especially common in pregnant women and pre-adolescent children, when the body is most sensitive to pathogens and various parasites. In addition, in tropical zones, where geophagy is especially common, food contains an excess of pollutants. People tend to eat the earth during gastrointestinal disorders, but this is more of a cure than a reason: clay "for lunch" comes from the depths, where it is almost not contaminated with parasites and microorganisms, plus people often warm up or simply boil the earth before use. Although the question of the functional purpose of geophagy still requires detailed research, scientists hope that the hypothesis about the protective role of clay ingestion will only be confirmed. They countthat their work will help to destroy the attitude towards this phenomenon as a strange and unambiguously harmful "uncivilized" pathology.