Reply #8: Dirt-eating practiced among poor whites and blacks: [View All]

[kurth]

February 13, 1984
SOUTHERN PRACTICE OF EATING DIRT SHOWS SIGNS OF WANING
By WILLIAM E. SCHMIDT , SPECIAL TO THE NEW YORK TIMES

It's after a rainfall, when the earth smells so rich and damp and flavorful, that Fannie Glass says she most misses having some dirt to eat. "It just always tasted so good to me," says Mrs. Glass, who now eschews a practice that she acquired as a small girl from her mother. "When it's good and dug from the right place, dirt has a fine sour taste." For generations, the eating of clay-rich dirt has been a curious but persistent custom in some rural areas of Mississippi and other Southern states, practiced over the years by poor whites and blacks.

But while it is not uncommon these days to find people here who eat dirt, scholars and others who have studied the practice say it is clearly on the wane. Like Mrs. Glass, many are giving up dirt because of the social stigma attached to it. "In another generation I suspect it will disappear altogether," said Dr. Dennis A. Frate, a medical anthropologist from the University of Mississippi who has studied the phenomenon. "As the influence of television and the media has drawn these isolated communities closer to the mainstream of American society, dirt eating has increasingly become a social taboo."...

It is difficult to say how prevalent dirt-eating is today. But in 1975, among 56 black women questioned by Dr. Frate as part of a larger study on nutrition in rural Holmes County, 32 of them said they ate dirt. The survey also showed that the ingestion of dirt tended to be more common in pregnancy. While it is was not unusual to find small boys who ate dirt, the practice appears to be shunned by adult males. Of 33 men questioned in the households studied, none said they ate dirt.

Dirt-eating has also been practiced among poor, rural whites, who in the early part of this century were known as "clay eaters." ...