PICA:

Myths and Facts around the Taboo

We all love that sweet aroma in the air when it rains and the water drops on the dry soil. In most cases, a person can describe the feeling as that of breathing in the aroma of their favorite dish. But we do not give in to the feeling. That is unhealthy. Right? We know that because we are taught that. But then SMOKING KILLS and DRINKING IS INJURIOUS TO HEALTH TOO, isn’t it? Still people do that. Now think of a setup where people are not taught about the consequences of gulping down non-nutritive clay. If you cannot relate to this, you might relate to the fact that some women love fragrance of petroleum or chewing down raw rice. Some might even give in to the craving. Yes!!! It is true. I know because I have witnessed it.
Belonging to a rural area, I am aware that this practice is prevalent under the rugs. Women, especially teenage girls and pregnant women are more prone to it. But due to embarrassment, usually do not come out for help. Now this subject is being researched all over the world. Though exact etiology of Pica is not known but there is a certain proposed hypothesis. Organic, psychodynamic, socioeconomic, and cultural factors have been implicated to etiology of Pica. Most widely accepted theory, points towards the nutritional deficiency as the cause of Pica. Researches have reported high prevalence of Pica in individuals with iron deficiency. Researchers have also revealed that the craving recedes once iron suppliments are consumed. Deficiency of calcium, zinc and many of B Compel vitamins is usual among such person. While some are finding it beneficial relating it to the similar tendencies observed in animals inhabiting in toxic environments and depending on toxic fauna; stating that it could be a natural way to combat increased hormones and toxic level in body. The geophagia also has medicinal value in being used as an anti-diarrhoeal agent due to its proposed tendency to absorb dietry toxins; reason why Kaolin (white clay) is used in various medicines for the purpose. Then there are others are bringing forth the injurious consequences of such habit.
I am writing about it because there is need to bring these issues prevalent among women of Jammu and Kashmir mainly in rural areas in eyes of the concerned, so that more researches could be done on this line and a proper awareness could be brought among the women going through such conditions.
FACTS ABOUT PICA
Pica is defined as the persistent eating of non- nutritive, non-food items over a period of at least one month. This eating is considered inappropriate to the developmental level of the individual and is not a part of culturally sanctioned practice. It is not a disease or disorder but a behavior that results from the interaction of biological, environmental and psychological factors. The term Pica comes from the Latin for “magpie” a bird known for its indiscriminate and unusual eating habits. Some of the most commonly described types of Pica are eating earth, soil or clay (geophagia), ice (pagophagia) and starch (amylophagia) etc. Infants and toddlers are typically excluded from this diagnosis since mouthing objects is a normal developmental behavior at that age. The persons with habit of Pica typically eat plaster, paper, paint, cloth, hair, insects, animal droppings, sand, pebbles and dirt. Some even eat ash, burnt matches, cigarette butts, soap etc. Ice-eating (pagophagia) has also been reported as a variant of Pica. Among all the varieties, geophagia (mud/clay-eating) is the most common pattern of pica practiced across the world. It is often compulsive eating and is more prevalent among rural population than urban setting. A woman with such tendency does not crave for just any soil but a particular kind which is particularly rocky, dry and has earthly fragrance.
The oldest evidence of geophagia practised by humans comes from the prehistoric site at Kalambo Falls on the border between Zambia and Tanzania (Root-Bernstein & Root-Bernstein, 2000). Here, calcium-rich white clay was found alongside the bones of Homo habilis (the immediate predecessor of Homo sapiens), as Peter Abrahams reveals in Geophagy and the Involuntary Ingestion of Soil.
Geophagia is nearly universal around the world in tribal and traditional rural societies (although apparently it has not been documented in Japan and Korea). In the ancient world, several writers noted the use of geophagia. Pliny is said to have noted the use of soil on Lemnos, an island of Greece, and the use of the soils from this island was noted until the 14th century. The textbook of Hippocrates (460–377 BCE) mentions geophagia, and the famous medical textbook called De Medicina edited by A Cornelius Celsus (14–37 CE) seems to link anaemia to geophagia. Early explorers in the Americas noted the use of geophagy amongst Native Americans, including Gabriel Soares de Sousa, who reported in 1587 of a tribe in Brazil using it in suicide, and von Humboldt, who said that a tribe called the Otomacs ate large amounts of soil. In Africa, Livingston wrote about slaves eating soil in Zanzibar, and it is also thought that large numbers of slaves brought with them soil eating practices when they were shipped as part of the transatlantic slave trade. Geophagia was common among slaves who were nicknamed "clay-eaters" because they had been known to consume clay, as well as spices, ash, chalk, grass, plaster, paint, and starch. In more recent times, according to Dixie's Forgotten People: the South's Poor Whites, geophagia was common among poor whites in the South-eastern United States in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and was often ridiculed in popular literature. The literature also states, "Many men believed that eating clay increased sexual prowess, and some females claimed that eating clay helped pregnant women to have an easy delivery." Geophagia among southerners may have been caused by the high prevalence of hookworm disease, in which the desire to consume soil is a symptom.
In contemporary scenario Geophagia is open in certain cultures. In Africa, kaolin, sometimes known as kalaba (in Gabon and Cameroon), calaba, and calabachop (in Equatorial Guinea), is eaten for pleasure or to suppress hunger. Kaolin for human consumption is sold at most markets in Cameroon and is often flavoured with spices such as black pepper and cardamom. Consumption is greater among women, especially during pregnancy. In Haiti, people afflicted by poverty are known to eat biscuits made from soil, salt, and vegetable shortening. Although these biscuits hold minimal nutritional value, still they manage to keep the poor alive, somehow. However, their long-term consumption is reported to cause stomach pains, and could be a source of malnutrition, and is not recommended by doctors. In the United States, cooked, baked, and processed dirt and clay are sold in health food stores and rural flea markets in the South. In the rural areas of Mississippi and other southern states, the consumption of clay-rich dirt has been a common custom and has been practiced by poor whites and blacks for generations. However, geophagia has become less prevalent as rural Americans assimilate into urban culture. Bentonite clay is available worldwide as a digestive aid; kaolin is also widely used as a digestive aid and as the base for some medicines. Attapulgite, another type of clay, is an active ingredient in many anti-diarrheal medicines.
In case you want to learn more here’s a book
Craving Earth
Understanding Pica—the Urge to Eat Clay, Starch, Ice, and Chalk by Columbia University Press
Sera L. Young (ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Sera L. Young is a faculty member of the Division of Nutritional Sciences at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York)
INTRODUCTION ON THE BACKCOVER STATES:
Humans have eaten earth, on purpose, for more than 2,300 years. They also crave starch, ice, chalk, and other unorthodox items of food. Some even claim they are addicted and "go crazy" without these items, but why? Sifting through extensive historical, ethnographic, and biomedical findings, Sera L. Young creates a portrait of pica, or nonfood cravings, from humans' earliest ingestions to current trends and practices. In engaging detail, she describes the substances most frequently consumed and the many methods (including the Internet) used to obtain them. She reveals how pica is remarkably prevalent (it occurs in nearly every human culture and throughout the animal kingdom), identifies its most avid partakers (pregnant women and young children), and describes the potentially healthful and harmful effects. She evaluates the many hypotheses about the causes of pica, from the fantastical to the scientific, including hunger, nutritional deficiencies, and protective capacities. Never has a book examined pica so thoroughly or accessibly, merging absorbing history with intimate case studies to illuminate an enigmatic behavior deeply entwined with human biology and culture.


Updated On 12/15/2016 1:21:00 PM