`EAT DIRT' AS GOOD AS `BON APPETIT'.Byline: Alison Motluk The New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of Times Eating soil can be good for you. This is the verdict of scientists in Canada who have analyzed soils eaten by people in China, Zimbabwe and the United States. The samples they looked at contained exactly the nutrients needed to provide the benefits that soil-eaters report. People have a long history of eating earth: Romans made medicinal tablets from soil and goats' blood; Germans in the last century substituted fine clay for butter on their bread; and in some African countries, clay is still sold as a digestive remedy. Health professionals nowadays consider the habit to be a symptom of mental illness. Susan Aufreiter of the University of Toronto Research at the University of Toronto has been responsible for the world's first electronic heart pacemaker, artificial larynx, single-lung transplant, nerve transplant, artificial pancreas, chemical laser, G-suit, the first practical electron microscope, the first cloning of T-cells, and William Mahaney of York University, also in Toronto, wondered if there was any evidence to support ``geophagy'' - eating earth for medicinal reasons. They used a technique called instrumental neutron activation analysis Neutron Activation Analysis (NAA) is a nuclear process used for determining certain concentrations of elements in a vast amount of materials. NAA allows discrete sampling of elements as it disregards the chemical form of a sample, and focuses solely on its nucleus. to get a precise chemical breakdown for each of three soil samples. The first sample, a fine, light yellowish soil from China's Hunan province, was used as ``famine food'' as recently as the 1950s. The second was a soft clay from Stokes County in North Carolina North Carolina, state in the SE United States. It is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean (E), South Carolina and Georgia (S), Tennessee (W), and Virginia (N). Facts and Figures Area, 52,586 sq mi (136,198 sq km). Pop. , said to be good for general health. The third sample, a red soil from termite termite or white ant, common name for a soft-bodied social insect of the order Isoptera. Termites are easily distinguished from ants by comparison of the base of the abdomen, which is broadly joined to the thorax in termites; in ants, there is mounds, was collected in Zimbabwe, where it is eaten to soothe upset stomachs. The Chinese soil turned out to be rich in iron, calcium, vanadium vanadium (vənā`dēəm), metallic chemical element; symbol V; at. no. 23; at. wt. 50.9415; m.p. about 1,890°C;; b.p. 3,380°C;; sp. gr. about 6 at 20°C;; valence +2, +3, +4, or +5. Vanadium is a soft, ductile, silver-grey metal. , magnesium, manganese and potassium - all of which would be in short supply in times of famine. The North Carolina soil was rich in iron and iodine, important for the health of both children and women of childbearing age, and often missing from the diets of the poor. ``It's an insult to say `eat dirt,' '' Aufreiter says. ``But poor blacks in the South did, and they were right.'' In the soil from Zimbabwe, the researchers found kaolinite kaolinite (kā`əlĭnīt), clay mineral crystallizing in the monoclinic system and forming the chief constituent of china clay and kaolin. , the principal ingredient in the commercial diarrhea treatment, Kaopectate. CAPTION(S): Photo Photo: People have a long history of eating earth: Romans made medicinal tablets from soil and goats' blood; Germans in the last century substituted fine clay for butter on their bread; and in some African countries, clay is still sold as a digestive remedy. |
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