Eating dirt can be good for the belly, researchers find

University of Chicago Press Journals ^ | June 2, 2011 | Unknown

[decimon]

Pearl S. Buck ping.

[cableguymn]

Are they setting us up for the coming food shortage? I know in third world countries they feed their kids dirt to keep their tummies full.

[EQAndyBuzz]

50 million North Koreans can’t be wrong.

[MamaDearest]

Eating dirt can be good for the belly, researchers find

Preparatory info / recommendation for citizens hard hit by Obama policies in the last year of the his administration?

[FrdmLvr]

North Koreans must be super healthy.

[napscoordinator]

I will not eat dirt to ward off toxins and things like that. Does not even make sense. Going by 2000 years ago is really stupid. They better have a ton of studies before they even consider such a thing.

[Defiant]

Next time I drop a pork chop on the ground, I can give it to uncle Carl without feeling bad.

[DeoVindiceSicSemperTyrannis]

A woman in Haiti selling mud cookies made of dirt, salt, and vegetable shortening.

Yum yum /s

[King Moonracer]

Not dirt from my yard...I own dogs.

[Sacajaweau]

Dirt is nothing...Ever read what type of critters are allowed in a can of tuna.

[napscoordinator]

Yuk and I don’t even want to know. lol.

[Hotmetal]

I will be 50 years old in Sept. my mom and Dad told me that when I was an infant I would sit under a shade tree in a sweet potato field and would eat dirt all day. When we moved to town the year I started school a black lady cleaned our house and baby sat my younger brother and me. She would cook some kind of dirt in a boiler on top of the stove, only dirt nothing else. The dirt looked like flower a white powder. The lady said it came from around the roots of trees and she would eat it a tablespoon at a time.

[Cicero]

Well, I went to Vitacost, where I get my supplements, and looked up “dirt.” It asked me if I meant “diet”?

So I looked up “clay.” And I did find one diet supplement, although there must be a cheaper way of eating dirt, I would think. But I hesitate to just dig it up, because I suppose you need the right kind of clay.

http://www.vitacost.com/Redmond-RealSalt-Clay

[Cicero]

Then there’s Dead Sea Mud, but that’s apparently used as a facial mask, to make your skin look good.

http://www.vitacost.com/Sea-Minerals-Mud-from-The-Dead-Sea/?bnPageBox=pp_alsoviewed&vbnpid=61488

[Track9]

Don’t tell the GOP.

[bopdowah]

Dirt has natural antibiotic properties from what I reead somwehere. The develpment of penicillin & other antibiotics was the direct result of observing that bacteria did not grow rampantly in soils.

[libbylu]

My dad has a saying that you have to eat a pound of dirt to grow up.

[hellbender]

There is a popular antidiarrheal medication called Kaopectate, because its original ingredients were kaolinite (a type of clay) and pectin. It is still available in that form as a veterinary medicine:

Suspected to work by absorbing bacteria and toxins in the intestine and coating the lining of the intestines for additional protection. Kaopectate now has attapulgite [another clay mineral] as the adsorbent instead of kaolin.

http://www.peteducation.com/article.cfm?c=0+1303+1459&aid=1431

[I still care]

One of the stories in my family is how finicky an eater I was. I wouldn’t eat ANY food contaminated with anything else; i.e., my potatoes couldn’t touch my hamburger on the plate, no catsup, etc. I hated eggs and wouldn’t touch anything mom put pepper on. I looked like a stick.

One day she made some grits or something, and put pepper on them. I, always the suspicious one (she was sneaky, always trying to make me eat what I KNOW I didn’t want) asked her if she put pepper on them.

That woman lied to my face and said, oh no, that’s just some dirt. Brush it off and it’ll be fine.

So I ate them. You see, I would eat dirt, but not evil pepper.

Now several hundred lbs later I would give anything to be so finicky about my food again.