That would explain a lot, actually.
In South Epsteinia they eat dirt. And they only season it with salt and vinegar because they’re white.
Are they preparing the subjects that eating dirt is “American”, and they should get used to it, as the prices are going to rise even more?
I really don’t think it was “common” up to the 80s. I remember reading about this in high school around 1970, when it was described as an old practice, uncommon and eccentric but still found among a few rural poor. I remember they used the term “sweet dirt” to describe dirt they considered edible.
Drinking acid out of cans is still super common tho.
Only because they took the drugs out.
I feel like there’s a decent difference between dirt and clay. Like the title made me imagine the same dirt that’s in a lawn with bugs and stuff; clay I imagine as being cleaner and more similar to eating wax or play-doh.
Explains a lot
peak south USA
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.
I can understand that.
However I grew up in the US south. My response was “Yea… that sounds about right…”
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.
When I first saw this skit, all I could think of was the jar of pickled pig’s feet that would get cracked open at family gatherings.
I mean, I drink my urine for the sulphur qualities in alchemy, which are a different thing entirely than what sulphur is in chemistry. Makes my teeth hurt less, I find. Must be good Karma in a yellow spectrum of frequencies. Don’t eat your poop though. That’s a bad idea, kids.
we’re getting punked, right? this is citogenesis? someone just made it up? does anyone have a primary source??
Human geophagia is a form of pica – the craving and purposive consumption of non-food items – and is classified as an eating disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) if not socially or culturally appropriate.[6] Sometimes geophagy is a consequence of carrying a hookworm infection. Although its cause remains unknown, geophagy has many potential adaptive health benefits as well as negative consequences.[5][7]
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.
Shameful we let children go hungry like this
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.
wood, straw?
Availability, ease of mastication, ease of swallowing.
If you had sawdust spices and and water you might have a decent shot, but that’s not all that easy to make without tools.
Clay, sand and soil are pretty easy to get to.
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
Pica is the name to Google
NYT is a reliable source.
Absolutely. Always on the right side of history.
Eat dirt all y’all!
I was baffled no one wrote here WHY anyone would do this. Here’s the answer from the article:
Researchers say those who eat dirt do not do so to satisfy hunger or to meet a biochemical urge to acquire certain metals or minerals that might be missing from the diet. Rather, they do so because the practice has been learned culturally. Links Are Traced to West Africa
Dr. Frate said dirt eating is one of the few customs surviving among some Southern blacks that can be directly traced to ancestral origins in West Africa. Dirt-eating is common among some tribes in Nigeria today.
According to his research, Dr. Frate said it was not uncommon for slave owners to put masks over the mouths of slaves to keep them from eating dirt. The owners thought the practice was a cause of death and illness among slaves, when they were more likely dying from malnutrition.
Thanks for citing this, but it still doesn’t explain why this custom has developed.
The most likely explanation is that kaolinite clay is known to reduce nausea and diarrhea.
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/public-health/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2022.893831/full
I compost and a common practice is to throw a handful of your native soil into your pile when you start it, to inoculate it with local soil bacteria. Bacteria do most of the work in an active compost pile.
I wonder if people were getting some kind of gut flora benefit from this.
I wonder this exact thing, given that soil is a living organism full of beneficial bacteria and other organic materials. The food we eat consumes it, takes what it needs, and then we do the same.
I find it also interesting that while the article claims this is a cultural thing vs. being done for heath benefits, I’d argue it became cultural because of a universal understanding of health benefits.
Now I’m not saying this is some long lost concept that is the missing key to fix all our ills, however I can see how consuming soil was an integral part of maintaining gut health and boosting immunity way before we understood how those systems work.
Yeah I don’t see an answer, but it is possible that it is chemical and not about flora, because I keep seeing “clay” mentioned specifically, instead of “soil.”
I agree that just saying “it’s cultural” is not an explanation. Cultures are not entirely arbitrary.
Depending on the composition of the soil it might also have antiparasitic properties.
Or they could be beneficial parasites, like that episode of the space show.
What rational reason is there for people to eat cereal for breakfast?
Cereal was designed to prevent masturbation.
I’d say it does a pretty good job. I hardly ever jack off while eating Cheerios in the morning.
Cream of Wheat, not cream of meat.
Then why are they called Apple Jacks?!
That’s why I rub out a fat one first and THEN eat the cereal.
That’ll show kellogg
There’s always a reason, but it doesn’t need to be entirely rational. Kellogg was a nut, but that’s a different topic, no?
Yeah pour it in the trousers!
I can’t speak for these specific people, but I know that eating clay can absorb toxins, like the kinds of poisons plants make to stop you eating them. There’s also potentially mineral supplementation and introduction of beneficial bacteria.
But it’s not very safe to eat dirt in modern times because we’ve poisoned a lot of the soil with various substances. You can buy edible dirt which is known to be safe.
You can buy edible dirt which is known to be safe.
Wait, what?
That’s true for a lot of customs.
Pretty much all customs are culturally transmitted - that’s kind of the definition. But they’re not necessarily totally arbitrary either - there is often some other information that can be added beyond “they have learned to do it.”
Oh I agree.
The cause of the cultural behavior usually has a purpose though.
The cause of the cultural behavior usually has a purpose though.
Yeah, but not necessarily one that is still relevant or even ever actually worked towards whatever goal there originally was. Cultural inertia is like that.
So it probably at some point had a purpose, but that purpose (whatever it was) might or might not apply any more or even be total nonsense.
We need to bring back sun god sacrifices, then. Maybe that’s why global warming and Stacy won’t go out with me.
In clinic, this is called pica.
Dirt is full of streptomyces species and spores. It’s why dirt smells like dirt. Those species produce most of our antibiotics.
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?
Let me tell you about scrapple.
I, as a life-long midwestener moved out to the “south east” Atlantic coast for a bit. Stopped in a diner one morning and got some breakfast, and they asked if I wanted scrapple with my breakfast. Not my first time seeing it on a menu around there, so I asked what it was, and they told me it was like an omelet, but made with apple and potato shavings. “Alright” I say, as I am open to trying new foods…
“What in the whole grain pancakes kind of fuck is this?!” I thought when my plate arrived. It was quite literally cutting board scraps, with like one scrambled egg added to bind it all together. Literally rough and dirty potato skins, and the ends of tomatoes, I literally found a fucking apple stem in mine. I figured they were playing some kind of joke on me, but I looked around, and other people had the same thing, and they were eating it the fuck up. So I gave it a try. Needless to say, undercooked potato and apple skins were not appetizing. The texture was like eating slices of bicycle innertube, and the flavor was akin to licking a well used, but unwashed cutting board.
Anyway, that was my first and last time trying scrapple. Learn from my mistake, you have been warned.
Scrapple is made from the stuff that’s not good enough to go in to hotdogs.
Source: I’m Pennsylvania Dutch, we invented it.
I once heard Spam described as “everything but the oink”
And so when I describe scrapple, I usually start with that, and then describe scrapple as being “mostly oink”
I’ve actually seen “scrapple” at the grocery store, but that was a sausage-shaped loaf of hydrated corn meal, bacon grease/lard, and the barest whiff of seasoning to make it resemble food. My girlfirend’s mom was from the poor south, and actually craved this meal from time to time.
This rendition was also very lackluster. You couldn’t beat the price, as it was cheapest thing in the breakfast isle by a wide margin, but it sure as hell tasted like it.
I ate “scrapple” once and it was delicious. Maybe it was cooked better?
I was visiting my ex’s relatives in Philly and one insisted that I come with them to a diner before I left. “You have to try scrapple, but I won’t tell you what’s in it till you do” grin.
I agreed without hesitation. I’m Creole. I’m from the swamp. I eat spicy-hot boiled hard-shell roaches, and raw mud-snot still in their teetees for flavor, and alligator assholes and rice in pig guts. Anything can taste good if you season it right, and if it doesn’t, it’s not worse than things I love already.
The scrapple I had was delicious. It was also the most seasoned thing I had eaten up there. It wasn’t “spicy”, but there was a wide variety of spices and it was extra peppery. It tasted like very fatty/greasy, slightly sweet, peppered breakfast sausage. She told me what was in it while i was eating it, looking all mischievous. Then I gave her the above line about my heritage, laughed, told her that just makes it more amazing, and kept eating.
She looked both slightly disappointed and filled with admiration. She loved it too, and I think I gave what was for her a shameful delight, a little more power and pride.
I’d eat someone’s favorite mud if it tasted good, and my guts would probably be stronger for it, gaining flora they have been missing for at least two generations.
Only time I’ve had scrapple was in Philly, at a diner. And it was delicious.
Clearly we found the good scrapple. I think I won’t bother eating it again unless I’m in a diner in Philly
I’m Creole. I’m from the swamp
Y’all have a rich culinary tradition that is world-renowned for its ability to pull amazing flavors out of everything, including the trees! I’m not at all surprised that the Creole rendition of this breakfast dish was top shelf.
I eat spicy-hot boiled hard-shell roaches, and raw mud-snot still in their teetees for flavor, and alligator assholes and rice in pig guts.
If you told me that said dishes were the real deal, prepared in a traditional manner, I’d tell you right then and there that I’ll be having seconds. Hell, I’d beg for cooking lessons.
Hard shelled roaches is crayfish. I think mud snot still in the tees tees is oysters.
I think.
Both are delicious, properly served. I just ate a half dozen raw oysters.
No way I hell am I making some dishes but as you said, if someone prepares for me one that I’d normally be turned off from, I’ll enthusiastically join in (though I probably will wait for them to take the first bite)
Was it also potato and apple or is “scrapple” a general purpose term for an omelette made out of whatever scraps are available?
I think scrapple is just seasoned scraps. I didn’t know what was in my scrapple exactly. I was told it was assholes and eyeballs, the ends of fruits and vegetables, and all the junk from the food no one eats.
I’m not too sure about what the version of scrapple you received was, it sounds like some kind of bastardized hash, but scrapple is a common breakfast thing in the Mid-Atlantic/Delaware valley area.
The version I’m familiar with as a Philadelphian, admittedly doesn’t sound a whole lot better on paper, but the actual eating experience sounds a lot more pleasant. It’s basically pork scraps and organ meats simmered down until they’re falling apart and mixed with cornmeal and buckwheat then formed into a mushy loaf, which is then sliced and fried.
You’re not going to identify any particular piece of pork or anything else in it, it’s a pretty uniform grey mush, and the only real texture comes from frying it to give the outside a nice crispiness. Nothing tough or chewy about it, you barely need to chew it, the texture is probably more like polenta (which it kind of is) than anything else you might be familiar with. It also usually doesn’t contain any apple or potatoes.
It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but if you find yourself near Philly don’t let whatever you were served in the south turn you off from trying actual scrapple.
Parts of Ohio have goetta, which I think is supposed to be pretty similar to scrapple but with oatmeal instead of corn meal.
I’ve also heard of “livermush” and “liver pudding” being served in some parts of the south, which honestly sound like dead-ringers for scrapple to me, though I have some friends from the south who insist that they’re different from and better than scrapple.
I feel like whatever you were served was some southerner trying to recreate something they heard described one time but never actually tried themselves, or just slapping the name on something without knowing that there’s another dish out there with the same name.
Fantastic description!
