Eating dirt

Telluride Daily Planet, Friday, June 7, 2024

There was a story circulating in our family that my paternal grandmother, who died of complications of diabetes, used to eat dirt as some sort of health remedy. After my father died years later, my 60-something mother told me and my husband after dinner that she herself had started ending a meal with a bit of dirt, because she’d heard it benefitted digestion. 

Before we’d had a chance to react, she reached over to the potted plant centerpiece on the table and scooped out a spoon full of what appeared to be potting mix and put it in her mouth. We stared at her. Had she lost it?

My mother, not known for playing pranks, couldn’t muster a straight face for more than a few seconds, however, and began to smile, revealing teeth flecked not with pieces of soil but Oreo cookie and chocolate pudding, the soil in which she had “planted” the silk flowers. The expression on our faces launched her into full-on heehawing guffaws. Someone had pulled this prank on her, it turns out, and she wanted to pay it forward. Now, of course, this stunt is all over the internet.

Did grandma Beatrice eat dirt though? If she’d had a craving for it, we would now term that geophagia (a form of abnormal cravings called pica) and first consider potential mineral deficiencies in her diet. 

But imagine for a moment the intelligence of this human body – that because of an iron, calcium, or zinc deficiency, we might make our way toward the ground with a spoon. Most of us live in a world of far more modern cravings – for salt, sugar, carbs, cheese, or chocolate. We notoriously mistake thirst for hunger; and our deepest nutritional needs go buried in the noise of processed foods and louder, more rudimentary tastes. 

For many of us, it would be very hard to identify what our bodies might be truly craving, whether it be glucose, sodium, fats, or even certain vitamins and minerals, let alone how we might distinguish a real need among all the other influences that cue us to crave. Environmental or emotional cues, feelings of deprivation, hormonal imbalance, lack of sleep, stress, and ingrown habits: these all can trigger what we perceive as a sharp, sometimes desperate, need and want.  

How is this remedied, and why remedy it? Well, better health is always a worthy objective: being more in tune and in harmony with this complex organism of ours that boasts trillions of chemical reactions per second, moves us in three dimensions, and allows us to think, feel, create and navigate life as a human. And, which functions largely on its own, with very little biological input from us, thank goodness. 

So what do we do to stop being indentured servants to our cravings? It can be difficult when there’s additional chemistry behind the craving. For instance, that feeling of not being able to stop eating a cheesy pizza is likely because casein, cheese’s protein that breaks down into casomorphins (compounds that can cross the blood-brain barrier), stimulates the release of dopamine, that familiar neurotransmitter related to feelings of pleasure and reward. Though gorging on pizza could conceivably be about needing calcium or fatty acids in our diet, it’s likely more about an addictive cycle of re-stimulating pleasure. And that’s just cheese! 

We can, however, through mindfulness, begin the process of tuning into our body’s healthier cravings, of exploring what we are really hungry for by slowing down, chewing more, and removing external distractions or multitasking from the scenario. I believe neutralizing the palate can be very useful, as well, and offer a couple of hacks – in addition to drinking more water – that we can use to feel more balanced in dealing with cravings. 

Bitter foods, not that popular in the U.S., can serve to balance the limited tastes we overindulge. Green tea – a palate cleanser – is an easy go-to after salty or sweet snacks to get you back on track. I use decaf organic green (with zero plastic content in the bags), but any green tea works. 

The other simple hack is an ayurvedic practice of tongue scraping, which takes very little time and can remove oral bacteria, improve the sense and sensitivity of taste, reduce bad breath and refresh the overall feeling of the mouth. An easy starter version is to use a spoon face down to gently pull residue off the extended tongue 5-10 times, rinsing the spoon each time. This is a daily practice and is worth far more than these few words in its potential benefits. 

It’s important to note here, also, that dirt contains many beneficial microbes – SBOs, or soil-based organisms – that we should strive to ingest through plant matter and contact with the soil – for the sake of our microbiome and overall health. For more about the real value of “eating dirt,” read “Eat Dirt” by Dr. Josh Axe.