geophagia, or just tasting?

My friend Shelby showed me how to taste dirt.         

"I eat dirt," she said out of the blue.  I wasn't sure what she meant at the time, and waved off the statement in favor of a more tangible course of conversation.  But when she invited me out to watch a sawmill in action, I was inducted into the practice of tasting soil for it's composition and texture.

 

While she isn't a geophagist , although she admits to spooning red clay down her gullet in the past, when she was anemic, and still harbors a predilection for crunchy New York shale, Shelby looks for the aspects a good soil needs for gardening: clay, to supply good drainage, silt, which is rich in organic matter, and sand, which aids in drainage and heat retention.  In my Master Gardener class they taught us to look for these elements by massaging the soil in our hands.  Oh, but it's so much more fun to taste it!  

Pieces of unwanted lumber are mulched and left to decompose in a pile at the sawmill.  These pieces will become the rich soil featured above. When I tasted the sawmill soil it was smooth, and subtly earthy, with almost no sand and a velvety, fine finish.  I could be describing a quality vintage red Burgundy, a wine, above all other wines, hailed for it's expression of earth through it's aroma and flavor.  The soils of Burgundy are centuries old, much of it marine in orientation, left over from an ancient sea.  Connoisseurs value the expression of chalk and mineral in Burgundy, and slate in Germany's Mosel Rieslings, for example.

The next soil I tasted that day was back at Shelby's house.  2 year old leaf mulch had been spread out for onions and chard.  The smell and taste were rich and musty, much grittier than the silty soil from the sawmill.  Later in the day I tasted some of my own soil from the autumn leaf-covered woods at the edge of the yard.  The mustiness was more subtle than at Shelby's, and the clay more prevalent, the texture, crunchier.  I was tasting these soils in preparation for my spring garden, sourcing my soil.  I want healthy, well draining soil rich in organic matter, but not too dense.  I want my vegetables to have all the nutrients they need as naturally as possible.  In turn, they will give me all the nutrients I need, as naturally as possible.  So what about those folks who do eat dirt?  Are they simply skipping the trouble of growing and harvesting for nutrients, and going straight to the source?  We till ground limestone into our soils to balance the acidity, and we take antacids derived from these same limestone sources for sour stomachs.  In theory, at least, the gap is not so wide between earth and socially acceptable product.

Dirt eating has been largely a closeted activity in the U.S., but seemingly more popular in the south east.  Maybe it's the iron-rich red clay.  In my brief research, Africa is the most common place to still find dirt eaters, although I have heard tales of pregnant ladies gulping down a healthy spoonful, not always with explanation, on this side of the ocean, too.  Of course there are all sorts of diseases in the soil too, from ring worm and hook worm to everything animal feces carry.  Now I'm wondering if I should halt my tasting habit before it starts.  

Links:

This 1901 New York Times  article focuses on a community of dirt eaters in St. Louis, Missouri. 

This 1942 Time Magazine clip demonstrates the language of the time in it's depiction of American dirt eaters.  

I like these articles too, including one by my friend Trevor Stokes, although you need a subscription to read the whole story.

New Scientist, 1997
Nature Magazine, 2006
Deseret News, 2006