LAST OF THE EARTH EATERS
In the Rural South, Connoisseurs of Clay Are Turning to Harder Stuff
by DENNIS
A. FRATE
A decade ago, a heavy rainfall in central Missis-
sippi almost invariably brought with it a puzzling specta-
cle. Soon after the downpour had drawn to a close, cars
would pull over and park at certain choice locations on
country roads. T h e passengers-black women, usually-
would get out and walk to the edge of the thoroughfare,
where the dirt-and-gravel roadbed met a steep earthen
bank. There, using kitchen utensils, they would extract
golden-brown clay, spoonful by spoonful, and deposit it in
shoe boxes, grocery bags, or bowls.
Anyone curious about the ultimate use of this raw
material could find the answer by strolling through nearby
hamlets on a pleasant day, an hour or two before sunset.
On a front porch here and there would sit two middle-
aged women, relaxing in rocking chairs and exchanging
reflections on everyday life. Occasionally one would reach
into the paper bag between them, grab a small handful of
dirt, and eat it.
This ritual was not peculiar to Mississippi, or even to
the South. In one form or another, it has been observed
among northern Europeans, Mediterraneans, Africans,
native Americans in both hemispheres, Australian aborig-
ines, and Pacific Islanders. Indeed, the consumption of
soil is common enough to have earned an academic label:
geophagy, or geophagia (not to be confused with geo-
mania-the compulsion to eat large quantities of earth,
even to the point of death). Most reports of geophagy
belong in history books; it is not, today, a common prac-
tice in many countries. Within a generation, it may have
vanished from central Mississippi and from the entire
South as well. These days the sight of southerners lined
up in cars waiting to excavate a freshly washed bank is
rare.
On first thought, there seems no reason to mourn the
passing of geophagy. Earth, while rich in some minerals,
is hardly an indispensable source of nutrition; there are
more palatable ways to get the iron, magnesium, silicon,
and potassium that a typical southern clay offers. More-
over, some physicians believe that eating dirt causes ane-
mia, and, on at least one occasion in Mississippi, fine clay,
which can adhere to the intestinal lining, completely
packed a woman’s colon. Nonetheless, there is evidence
that some southerners who have kicked the habit are the
worse for it. Odd as it may sound, giving up dirt has been
detrimental to their health.
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T h e origin of geophagy, like its persistence for millen-
nia, remains something of a mystery. T h e solution may lie
in an early belief that clay had medicinal value. Emasigl-
lata, or “sealed earth,” was used by the Greeks as early as
40 B.C. to combat a variety of ills. Not all earth qualified
for the job, though. It had to be extracted by a priestess
from certain caves on the island of Lemnos before sunrise
on August 6, then mixed with goat’s blood, compacted
into lozenges, and sealed with the figure of a goat. Galen,
the Greek physician and philosopher, visited Lemnos in
the latter part of the second century and took twenty
thousand lozenges to Rome, where they remained in
strong demand for years to come, especially as an antidote
to poisoning. (Today there is speculation that elements in
the sealed earth bonded with ions of mercury, the toxic
element in many poisons, and carried them through the
digestive tract.) As recently as 1848, clay was recom-
mended for that use in European medical texts, and to
this day bentonite and kaolin, clay constituents, are used
to cure diarrhea.
Whatever its merits, the ingestion of earth had by A.D.
1000 become a habit among some people. Avicenna, the
Arab physician and philosopher, suggested that geophagy
be cured “in boys by use of the whip, in older patients by
restraints, prison, and medical exhibits.’’ As for “incor-
rigible” earth eaters, they should be “abandoned to the
grave.” Centuries later, European explorers reported wit-
nessing geophagy among natives in South America and
Africa. David Livingston found clay eating, or safura, to
be common among pregnant women in African tribes, and
he blamed it for a malady characterized by shortness of
breath, weakness, and pallor. He wrote in his Last Jour-
nals, of 1870, “Squeeze a fingernail and if no blood
appears beneath it, safura is the cause of the blood-
lessness.”
American slave owners were of the opinion, probably
mistaken, that the consumption ofclay led to a potentially
fatal syndrome known as Cachexia afircanus, and they
sometimes muzzled their field workers, lest productivity
suffer. Those efforts notwithstanding, geophagy was alive
and well in the South more than a century after the Civil
War, a fact documented by a study I conducted in 1971
with Donald Vermeer, of Louisiana State University. T h e
study focused on Holmes County, a largely black commu-
nity some fifty miles north of Jackson, the capital of
 Wdham Chfistmbmy, Alabama Landscape, near Tuscaloosa, 1980
Mississippi. With most of its adult workers engaged in
farming, the lumber business, or cattle raising, Holmes
County has held on to rural traditions longer than most
parts of the South. We found that, contrary to the popular
beliefs of the day, geophagy was not a casual, haphazard
practice but a very structured custom, embedded in a
well-defined system of beliefs and r i t u a l e t h e product of
centuries of cultural evolution.
C onsider the process of selecting clays. Not just
any soil will do; sandy loams and other coarse varieties are
rejected in favor of fine-grained clays, prized for their dis-
tinctively sour taste. Choice soils, like choice wines, ac-
quire a reputation over the years and are sometimes
known by their area of origin. Among connoisseurs in cen-
tral Mississippi, the term “Franklin dirt” refers to clay
from a popular site near the community of Franklin.
Women who live in the floodplains of the Yazoo and Mis-
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sissippi rivers call the clay they consume “hill dirt,” be-
cause they must travel to the hills to get it; the muddy,
viscous soil deposited by the nearby rivers-dubbed
“gumbo” by African ancestors and called by that name
even today-is rarely eaten.
Depending on the location of a site and local demo-
graphics, it may be used exclusively by a single extended
family or by a distinct group of acquaintances, or shared
by a broad cross section of residents from a nearby town.
In any event, it will be systematically exploited until
extraction is no longer feasible or until the “miners” are
lured away by a richer site; just as affluent urban dwellers
might exchange opinions about new restaurants, resi-
dents of Holmes County will notify close friends upon
finding an untapped site that offers particularly tasty soil.
There is no practical reason to wait until after a rainfall
to dig clay; the rain, in fact, may leave the earth difficult to
extract. But the “smell of the good earth” summoned by a
brisk downpour whets the appetite of the clay eater, and
 the temptation to secure a fresh supply often proves
irresistible.
Once extracted, the clay may be eaten raw or prepared
for consumption. Some women season their clay with salt
or vinegar, and more than two-thirds of the geophagous
women we surveyed cooked their clay in pans atop a stove
or in ovens, sometimes for as long as three hours. T h e
purpose, in part, is to dry out the soil, which is 30 percent
water by weight. Also, many women reported preferring
the “smoked” flavor of baked clay. (Wood-burning stoves
were still common in rural Mississippi in 1971.) This
preference may be a vestige of the days when chimneys
were constructed from a compound of soil and straw, and
pieces of clay were chipped off and eaten. One woman
recalled that during her childhood, geophagy eroded her
family’s chimney to the point of collapse.
Such blind commitment to the habit is not surprising.
T h e average daily helping is only about fifty grams,
roughly one heaping handful, but geophagists can none-
theless experience intense cravings for earth upon absti-
nence. One woman, unable to visit her usual source of
clay during an extended period of inclement weather,
complained of headache, nausea, and abdominal cramps.
Southerners sometimes mail shoe boxes full of local clay
to relatives who have moved to large northern cities. In
1971, I was in Chicago delivering a lecture on geophagy to
a group of former Mississippi residents. O n e woman
began to laugh quietly as I spoke. When I inquired about
her response, she pulled from her purse a small bag of dirt
sent from a relative in Mississippi.

A lmost all of the clay eaten in Holmes County is

consumed by women, especially pregnant women, or by
young children, both boys and girls. In Holmes County in
the early 1970s, almost 30 percent of all pregnant women
were practicing geophagy, compared with about 18 per-
cent of all other women. Young children pick up the habit
from their mothers, who consider soil a convenient paci-
fier. Around the age of four, however, the child is brought
into touch with the prevailing cultural norms; since clay
eating is considered a woman’s habit, mothers begin to
discourage it in both boys and girls. (I knew of one woman
who locked her clay in the glove compartment of her car to
keep it from her children.) Girls are permitted to take up
the habit years later, and they tend to do so around the
first menstrual cycle or during pregnancy.
This tendency has led some investigators to attribute
geophagy to nutritional deficiencies brought on by preg-
nancy and menstruation. But this hardly constitutes com-
pelling evidence that clay eating is biologically motivated.
Another possible explanation for the “sex-specific” na-
ture of the custom is that local residents attach decidedly
feminine connotations to eating clay. In the words of one
observer, “It’s a woman’s dish.” Only once did I hear of a
man who consumed clay, and he was described as being
“not all man.” Granted, the historical origin of geophagy
may be tied to biological drives triggered by vital minerals
in the clay. (After all, a number of nonhuman primates eat
dirt.) Whatever the habit’s origin, though, it seems today
to be perpetuated by learning, not instinct; only after
watching older women practice it do young children and
adolescent girls adopt the custom.

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 Ironically, the tendency to see geophagy as an instinc-
tive response to nutritional needs has been accompanied
by a view of it as unhealthy. It has been blamed for, among
other things, parasitic infections, poisonings, and iron
deficiencies. (The last of these claims rests on the belief
that clays have “ion exchange” properties-that iron ions
attach themselves to the clays, which then pass through
the system, thus draining the body’s mineral stores.) But
Vermeer and I found no support for these assertions.
Geophagous children were no more likely than other chil-
dren to suffer from parasitic infections, and geophagous
women were not particularly prone to anemia. Finally, we
found no chemical toxins in the clay. While we are not pre-
pared to recommend the consumption of Holmes County
clay, neither do we see any reason to forbid it. We did find,
however, that some women have begun using store-
bought substitutes for clay, especially laundry starch and
baking soda, which are similar in texture to fine clays and
vaguely comparable in taste. And those substitutes may
be much more pernicious than the clay itself.
T h e use of substitutes is sometimes a matter of conve-
nience. Women who are not up to driving to the hills for
clay can drop by the supermarket instead. But there is also
evidence of a long-term trend toward clay substitutes:
younger women in particular, we found in 1971, tended to
prefer packaged products. This trend appears to have
been sustained--and to have been accompanied by a sec-
ond trend toward giving up the habit altogether. A 1984
follow-up survey of ten clay eaters disclosed that six had
given up clay and claylike substances, while two had
switched to baking soda and one to laundry starch. Only
one had remained faithful to the soil.
T h e reasons behind these marked changes are many,
but they may be related to the movement of rural resi-
dents into cities and towns, where the habit is frowned on
and clay is harder to come by. And, largely because of
television, even rural residents are more in touch these
days with cultural norms beyond their communities.
They are aware of the negative connotations attached to
the term “dirt eater,” a pejorative that has racial overtones
when applied to blacks, and when applied to whites is
roughly equivalent to “white trash.” There are also rea-
sons for kicking the habit that have nothing to do with
urbanization or modernization. One woman recently told
a reporter for TheNm York Times that she had given up clay
eating after her husband complained that it “makes your
mouth taste like mud.”
T h e health hazards of baking soda and laundry
starch are best seen when viewed in relation to central
Mississippi’s historical distinction as having one of the
highest rates of hypertension-high blood pressure-ever
documented anywhere. A study I am now conducting in
Holmes County and four adjacent counties indicates that
47 percent of the area’s residents over twenty-five years of
age suffer from hypertension, compared with a national
average of 22 percent. Among black women, the rate is 57
percent, and the national average 40 percent. T h e rate of
deaths due to cardiovascular disease is also much higher in
central Mississippi than in the nation at large. Two of the
more significant contributors to elevated blood pressure
are obesity and high intake of sodium. Laundry starch,
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with its phenomenally high concentration of calories, con-
tributes to the former, and baking soda, consisting largely
of sodium, to the latter.
T h e recommended daily intake of sodium for an adult
is between 1,100 and 3,300 milligrams. Baking soda has
952 milligrams per teaspoon, roughly half as much as salt.
T h e amount of baking soda eaten varies, but consump-
tion of one-fourth to one-half of a pound is not uncom-
mon-a daily intake of 21,000 to 42,000 milligrams of so-
dium, between six and thirteen times the recommended
maximum. For those heart patients who have quit salting
their green beans on doctor’s orders, it will seem startling
that a person could consume the equivalent of four ounces
of salt a day-not counting the salt eaten with meals. In-
gested in that quantity, sodium not only can lead to hyper-
tension but can counter the effects of a common antihy-
pertensive, oral diuretics.
Laundry starch may be less harmful, but its effects are
decidedly negative. A one-pound box contains 1,600 calo-
ries-“dead” calories with no protein or vitamins. One
woman reported consuming this much starch daily, and a
number of women ate half as much each day. Added to the
3,000 or so calories a typical person in this area ingests
each day at meals, 800 calories takes a toll.
Of course, clay substitutes are not the cause of all
hypertension in central Mississippi; elevated blood pres-
sure is also prevalent among the region’s black and white
men, who have never been prone to geophagy, and among
white women, who are much less prone to it than black
women. Indeed, sources of high blood pressure abound in
this part of the state. Poverty is widespread, and for many
the task of daily survival is a stressful undertaking. Ciga-
rette and alcohol consumption is extremely high. Many
residents cannot afford even basic health services. T h e
salt-rich and fatty diets of the rural South only make
things worse; the area’s unusually high rate of obesity no
doubt predates the switch to clay substitutes.
Still, there is strong evidence that clay substitutes play
some role in all this. Over the past thirteen years, the
greatest increase in prevalence of hypertension has
occurred among black women, the group whose members
are most likely to have undergone a switch from clay to
baking soda or laundry starch in the meantime.
T h e obvious irony-that abstinence from reputedly
unhealthy clay has been, in many cases, unhealthy-is
compounded by a further irony. One of the reasons for this
abstinence is the burgeoning of electronic communica-
tions; television has made more Americans aware of na-
tional cultural norms and, in some cases, self-conscious
about their local cultural idiosyncracies. T h e mass media
are also capable of conveying medical information-about
the dangers of overeating and of high sodium intake, for
example. Indeed, local and national campaigns for cardio-
vascular health education are under way, and they are
being conducted with the aid of television. It will be in-
teresting to see whether, in Mississippi, one effect of the
mass media can keep up with the other. 0
DENNISA. FRATE,a medical anthropologist, k a meatrh associate
profasor at the Univmity of Mississippis Rweatrh Institute of Phat=
maceutical Scienca and the phcipal investigator for Community
Control of Hypertension, a p r o r a m funded 4the National Institufa
of Health.