Earth food

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With earth food , Greek. Geophagy the phenomenon is referred to certain soil types to eat that was also observed in animals and vereinzelnd and historically, especially in times of need in humans. Occasionally the term “edible earth” is used here. In pathology, this behavior is also known as pica syndrome . In alternative medicine today, healing earth and the like are still used.

People

The silica in the soil that was eaten by an African woman appears white on this simple X-ray.
A five year old girl in Peru with a desire to eat earth (geophagia). Wood engraving by E. Riou, 186-.

Descriptions and possible causes

There are descriptions of earth food from many parts of the world. Most of the reports refer to past centuries and indigenous peoples or developing countries. The consumption of particularly clay or salty soils is often described.

Soils are consumed for a variety of reasons, which cannot be clarified in each individual case. Well-known interpretations relate to earth food out of need ( malnutrition ), out of addiction, for religious reasons or as a remedy, for example in the field of medical self-treatment and folk medicine belief. In other cases, it may also be a matter of instinctively approached metabolic deficiency symptoms ( trace elements ) or peculiarities in the nutritional needs of pregnant women.

Geophagy was associated in 1852 as a self-medication against anemia after malaria , but this was later denied (1906): Conversely, anemia is the consequence of geophagia.

Demarcation and distinctions

For example, silica is traditionally offered as a dietary supplement . Also healing earth is still occasionally used medical powder Lößerde .

With the Urkost there is a nutritional concept that includes occasionally eating earth.

Anthropological and historical evidence

Some researchers believe that humans first ate soil in Africa:

"The oldest evidence of geophagy practiced by humans comes from the prehistoric site at Kalambo Falls on the border between Zambia and Tanzania ( Root-Bernstein & Root-Bernstein, 2000). Here, a calcium-rich white clay was found alongside the bones of Homo habilis (the immediate predecessor of Homo sapiens ). "

- Peter Abrahams : Geophagy and the Involuntary Ingestion of Soil

Geophagy is nearly universal in tribal and traditional rural societies around the world (although it has apparently not been documented in Japan or Korea). In the ancient world , several authors have mentioned the phenomenon of geophagy. Pliny the Elder is believed to have noticed the ingestion of earth on the island of Lemnos , a Greek island, and the use of the soils from that island was observed until the 14th century. Hippocrates' textbook mentions geophagy and the famous medical textbook entitled “ De Medicina ”, edited by Aulus Cornelius Celsus, seems to associate anemia with geophagia.

Alexander von Humboldt reported on the earth meal with the Otomacs .

From a travelogue published in 1834:

“In people who habitually eat clay, the skin shows a certain resemblance to the skin of people who are in the first stage of elephantiasis ; such people look puffy and complain of weakness and pain in the legs. Clay feasting is not common among the Pokomo , but it is said to be widespread among the slaves of the coastal population. Mr. Tappin, the leader of the mission steamer "Highland Lassie", which provided the traffic between Zanzibar and Mombasa- Frere-Town, the stations of the Church Missionary Society, said the following: He spent 5½ years in the sugar factory of the Englishman Frazer in Kokotoni had the opportunity to observe habitual clay eaters on the island of Zanzibar. Of 700 slaves employed there who had to work hard for months from 2 a.m. to 9 a.m. and 11 p.m., the greater half ate clay and was always at ease with them. Women with babies regularly ate clay and used it to satisfy the hunger of their three to five year old children. Only dry clay was eaten; in order to have sufficient quantities available, people erected small racks and dried the wet clay, which was formed into small, thin slices or strands. If they were not given time for this, or if dry clay could not be obtained in any other way, they would consume clay from the house walls and thereby damage them significantly, so that at times there were very unpleasant arguments. If the people were not given clay, they would become disgruntled, weak and “sick as drinkers”. The amount of clay eaten by an adult in the course of a day, Mr. Tappin estimated to be at least 1 pound, stated that clay eaters eat little other food and, even when hungry, prefer clay to all other foods. "

- Clemens and Gustav Denhardt

“Hunger also drives many to eat earth. Across Alabama , Mississippi , and North Carolina , many black women often eat up to 50 percent - clay. This apathetic and anemia- exhausted woman led me to the slope where she used to dig for "food" that she shared with her son. “Do you eat earth?” “Sometimes…” “Does it taste good?” “Yes.” (Surprised) “Have you never eaten any?” […] “Who else eats earth here?” “My mother and my aunt there up in the white house. I think all of them. ""

- Jacob Holdt : American Pictures. Pictures from America. Personal experiences in America's lower classes 1970–1975, S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 1984, ISBN 3-10-034102-3 , p. 95, with pictures

From Meyers Konversations-Lexikon, 4th edition. from 1888–1890

This article is based on a text in the public domain from Meyers Konversations-Lexikon , 4th edition from 1888 to 1890.

Please only remove this note if you have revised the article to such an extent that the text reflects the current state of knowledge on this topic, this has been proven and it meets today's linguistic requirements.
To refer to the Meyers article afterwards, you can{{ Meyers Online | Volume | Page}} to use.

“ Earth food can be found, for example, in the sandstone pits of Kyffhäuser and in Lüneburg , where the workers spread a fine clay, the so-called stone butter , on the bread. Other areas of Europe in which earth food occurs are Styria , Treviso (northern Italy), Sardinia , where earth is brought to the market like other foods; the far north of Sweden and the Kola peninsula , where the earth, an infusorial earth known as mountain flour, is enjoyed baked under the bread.

Earth is used as a treat in large quantities in Persia , despite a ban imposed towards the end of the 19th century. In the bazaars you can buy a white, fine, slightly greasy clay and irregular, white, firm tubers that have a fine texture and taste a bit salty.

The ladies of the Spanish and Portuguese aristocracy once regarded the earth of Ertemoz as a great delicacy.

In addition to this use of enjoying the earth as food, which extends to all tropical countries and many subtropical regions and is most common in America and Africa, there is, for example, the custom in Nubia of enjoying earth as a medicine . In other places this custom is mixed with religious motifs, and in others it appears as a religious act alone, as in Timor .

There are many, fundamentally different causes for the widespread custom of eating the earth. It is not ruled out that the earth can produce a certain taste; Apart from that, many types of earth are salty , so that enjoying the earth can in many cases be seen as a substitute for enjoying salt. Further earth food comes in the course of various, mostly in tropical diseases domestic before, especially in the through the intestinal parasites duodenale Anchylostomum induced anemia .

Contemporary practices

Several different stones made of clay-like material for sale in a local market in Kabwe, Zambia. These are usually bought and consumed by pregnant women.

Muddy cakes are still made and eaten by hand in Africa today . In the mountain villages in Uluguru ( Morogoro / Tanzania region ) the mud biscuits are made from the red earth that is said to be particularly rich in minerals there. The red earth is first finely crushed in two steps, dried on the floor and filled into sacks. Two handfuls of earth are then taken, mixed with water and kneaded into a lump of clay with your hands. In the next step, parts of this still moist lump are broken off and rolled by hand on a wooden board into a cylindrical rod about 10 cm long and 3 cm thick. These pieces are then dried on the floor until they harden. Each work step is carried out by a different one of the women who sit together in a circle on the floor. Dozens of such muddy cake sticks are then packaged together and sold in the villages and at the market. The Muddy Cake is rock-hard, but can be bitten off with your teeth and crushed in your mouth, it tastes sandy and earthy. The women recommend these muddy cakes especially for pregnant women because they are said to contain iron and folic acid in high concentrations. Pregnant women in the region eat 4–5 pieces a day. The sticks are also used as skin color for jewelry, but moistened again before use.

Filthy biscuits, formed from yellow clay from the plateau, salt and vegetable fat, have become a regular meal in the slums of Haiti since the 2010 earthquake . Originally they were offered as cosmetics (for peeling ) and as a remedy to bind stomach acid and as a source of calcium for children and pregnant women. Various video reports also show people who eat earth patties against hunger. Relevant press releases, photo reports and film reports were contradicted by the filmmaker Claudette Coulanges , who lives in Germany and Haiti and a native of Haitian: “I can remember some women, especially pregnant women, who occasionally nibbled or sucked dried clay. But that had nothing to do with hunger. ” And “ Total nonsense, because who can afford butter in a slum - not to mention the hot and humid climate? ”

At the Macaulay Institute in Aberdeen , 30 clay samples were examined to determine “to what extent they have the chemical potential to clear up toxic foodstuffs. The analysis could scientifically confirm [...]: Dirt cleanses the stomach. "

illness

See also: Pica syndrome

This article is based on a text in the public domain from Meyers Konversations-Lexikon , 4th edition from 1888 to 1890.

Please only remove this note if you have revised the article to such an extent that the text reflects the current state of knowledge on this topic, this has been proven and it meets today's linguistic requirements.
To refer to the Meyers article afterwards, you can{{ Meyers Online | Volume | Page}} to use.

Eating the earth can also represent a wrong urge to eat , as found in those with bleaching addicts and hysterics , including younger girls (pica chlorotica), who, for example, take chalk, slate, pencils in their mouths and chew on them, and also eat old mortar.

Typical of the regular earth eater is the pot belly, general emaciation, swelling of the liver and spleen . What is striking is the frequency of passionate earth-eating in childhood.

Risks of eating earth include the transmission of diseases or the ingestion of intestinal parasites and possible symptoms of intoxication . The ingestion of clay can lead to hypokalemia and iron deficiency by binding potassium and iron .

Animals

A silk sifaka ( Propithecus candidus ) in Marojejy National Park , Madagascar, eats soil

Geophagy is widespread in the animal kingdom. Galenus , the Greek philosopher and physician, was the first to discover the use of clay or kaolin by sick or injured animals in the 2nd century AD. This type of geophagy has been documented in "many species of mammals ( tapirs , forest elephants , etc.), birds, reptiles, butterflies and isopods , especially herbivores". It mostly serves to absorb minerals.

Cattle eat clayey soil from termite mounds of pathogenic toxin .

Primates

Four reasons for primates ingesting soil are believed:

  1. Earth minerals adsorb toxins such as phenols and secondary metabolites ,
  2. the absorption of soil buffers the stomach acid and regulates the pH value in the digestive tract ,
  3. Earth counteracts diarrhea ,
  4. Earth works against endoparasites .

In addition, it has been suggested that minerals and others be absorbed from the earth in order to fortify a low-nutrient diet and improve the body's iron supply.

Black and white colobus monkeys , mountain gorillas and chimpanzees in particular are known to eat soil.

Birds

Different species of parrots in picking up clay

Many species of South American parrots have been seen leaking clay, and yellow- crested cockatoos have been seen ingesting clays in Papua New Guinea .

Bats

There is debate as to whether geophagy in bats is primarily a nutritional supplement or a detoxifier. Some species of bats are known to regularly visit minerals or salt licks to increase mineral consumption. Voigt et al. showed that both mineral-poor and healthy bats visit salt licks at the same rate. Hence, it is unlikely that minerals are the main cause of geophagia in bats. In addition, the presence of bats in salt licks increases during periods of high energy demand. Voigt et al. concluded that the primary purpose of bat presence in salt licks is for detoxification purposes that compensate for the increased consumption of toxic fruits and seeds. This was particularly evident in lactating and pregnant bats, as their food intake increases to meet their higher energy needs.

literature

  • Alexander von Humboldt and Aimé Bonpland . Voyage aux régions équinoxiales du nouveau continent: fait en 1799, 1800, 1801, 1802, 1803 et 1804… avec deux atlas, qui renferment, l'un les vues des Cordillèrres et les monumens des peuples indigènes de l'Amérique, et l ' autre des cartes geographiques et physiques . Maze, Paris 1819, pp. 609ff. (Digital copy) --- Journey to the equinoctial areas of the new continent in the years 1799, 1800, 1801, 1802, 1803 and 1804 . Cotta, Tübingen 1823, 4th part, 8th book, p. 557ff. (Digitized version)
    • different earths that are eaten by the indigenous peoples of South America with different effects
    • German clay: In Germany the workers in the sandstone pits of the Kiffhauser mountain spread a fine clay, which they call stone butter, on their bread instead of butter. They find it very filling and easy to digest. (1823, p. 568 digitized)
  • B. Anell, S. Lagergrantz: Geophagical customs . Uppsala 1958, OCLC 462245551 .
  • T. Johns, M. Duquette: Detoxification and mineral supplementation as functions of geophagy. In: Am J Clin Nutr. 1991; 53, pp. 448-456.
  • Jörg Blech: Cravings for dirt . In: Der Spiegel . No. 50 , 2007, p. 152 ( online ).
  • Sera Young: Craving Earth: Understanding Pica - the Urge to Eat Clay, Starch, Ice, and Chalk. Columbia University Press, 2012, ISBN 978-0-231-14609-8 .
  • Berthold Laufer: Geophagy , Publications of the Field Museum of Natural History. Anthropological Series, Vol. 18, No. 2, (1930), pp. 99, 101-198.

Processing in the literature

Web links

Wiktionary: Earth food  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ CF Heusinger: The so-called geophagia or tropical (better: malaria) chlorosis as a disease of all countries and climates [sic!] H. Hotop, Cassel 1852 ( full text in the Google book search).
  2. ↑ W. Meigen: "Edible Earth" from German New Guinea , Freiburg im Breisgau, 1906, a copy can be read in the journal of the German Geological Society at archive.org
  3. ↑ a b c Peter W. Abrahams: Geophagy and the Involuntary Ingestion of Soil . In: Essentials of Medical Geology 2013, ISBN 978-94-007-4374-8 , pp. 433-454, doi : 10.1007 / 978-94-007-4375-5_18 .
  4. ↑ a b Woywodt, A, Kuss, A: Geophagia: the history of earth-eating . In: Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine . 95, No. 3, 2002, pp. 143-6. doi : 10.1258 / jrsm.95.3.143 . PMID 11872770 . PMC 1279487 (free full text).
  5. ↑ http://telota.bbaw.de/avh/uns/articles.php?id=100457 About the earth-eating otomaks. From Alex. v. Humboldt's Views of Nature, 1807
  6. ↑ Clemens and Gustav Denhardt: Comments on the original map of the lower Tana area. In: Journal of the Society for Geography in Berlin. Volume nineteenth. Verlag von Dietrich Reimer, Berlin, 1834. p. 156. (digital copy in the Internet Archive ).
  7. ↑ rory Carroll: Haiti: Mud cakes become staple diet as cost of food soars beyond a family's reach , The Guardian, Tuesday, July 29, 2008, at guardian.co.uk
  8. ↑ Jonathan M. Katz: Desperation in Haiti: The people eat dirt. on: spiegel.de , January 29, 2008.
  9. ↑ Photo gallery Haiti: The people and the filthy pastries. January 29, 2008 , last accessed in February 2013.
  10. ↑ Dirt poor Haitians eat cookies made of mud at worldfocus.org
  11. ↑ Mud biscuits against hunger, broadcast 10vor10, report by Swiss television
  12. ^ Hermann Abmayr: Mud biscuits. ( Memento of the original from April 17, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. in context weekly newspaper @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.kontextwochenzeitung.de
  13. ↑ Jörg Blech: Cravings for dirt . In: Der Spiegel . No. 50 , 2007, p. 152 ( online ).
  14. ↑ Jain, CP, Dashora, A., Garg, R., Kataria, U. and Vashistha, B .: Animal self-medication through natural sources . In: Natural Product Radiance . 7, No. 1, 2008, pp. 49-53.
  15. ↑ Diamond JM: Evolutionary biology. Dirty eating for healthy living . In: Nature . 400, No. 6740, 1999, pp. 120-1. doi : 10.1038 / 22014 . PMID 10408435 .
  16. ↑ Minesh Kapadia, Hui Zhao, Donglai Ma, Rupal Hatkar, Monica Marchese, Boris Sakic: Zoopharmacognosy in diseased laboratory mice: Conflicting evidence . In: PLOS ONE . 9, No. 6, 2014. doi : 10.1371 / journal.pone.0100684 . PMID 24956477 . PMC 4067353 (free full text).
  17. ^ R. Krishnamani, WC Mahaney: Geophagy among primates: adaptive significance and ecological consequences . In: Animal Behavior . 59, No. 5, 2000, pp. 899-915. doi : 10.1006 / anbe.1999.1376 . PMID 10860518 .
  18. ^ KA Bolton, VM Campbell, FD Burton: Chemical analysis of soil of Kowloon (Hong Kong) eaten by hybrid macaques . In: Journal of Chemical Ecology . 24, No. 2, 1998, pp. 195-205. doi : 10.1023 / a: 1022521306597 .
  19. ↑ The roles of soil characteristics and toxin adsorption in avian geophagy . In: Biotropica . 40, No. 6, 2008, pp. 766-74. doi : 10.1111 / j.1744-7429.2008.00429.x .
  20. ↑ geophagy in birds of Crater Mountain wildlife management area, Papua New Guinea . In: Journal of Zoology . 268, No. 1, 2006, pp. 87-96. doi : 10.1111 / j.1469-7998.2005.00002.x .
  21. ^ A b c Nutrition or Detoxification: Why Bats Visit Mineral Licks of the Amazonian Rainforest . In: PLOS ONE . 3, No. 4, 2008. doi : 10.1371 / journal.pone.0002011 . PMID 18431492 . PMC 2292638 (free full text).
  22. ↑ Ludwig Wilhelm Gilbert (ed.). Annals of Physics . Volume 28, Hall 1808, p. 492 (digitized version)
  23. ↑ Bill Casselman: geophagy = the eating of dirt, earth, soil. ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.billcasselman.com