Would you like some soil with that?
In his monthly column, Dr Wilhelm von Ludwig weighs in on geophagia, also known as eating soil and its link to iron deficiency, which is common in South Africa.
POLOKWANE – Would you like some soil with that?
“How do you know that?” she asked accusatively.
I probably appeared to her as a prophet at best or a sorcerer at worst. The subject of the inquisition was whether she ate soil.
The mere question may offend many a suburban patient, but in this case, she was shocked because it was the truth. Something she would like to keep hidden. A guilty pleasure.
Eating soil is very common in rural areas of Limpopo and the rest of South Africa. It is so ubiquitous that street vendors sell packets of soil for R10 at the taxi rank and just like any other popular product, it comes in a variety of flavours.
You have the deep red soil that they collect from anthills on the farms. This rarity, I am told, is only available at certain vendors.
Then there are the pale dried clay-cakes, which are for the connoisseurs. Between these opposites, you find a spectrum of colours that will make Plascon blush.
But the colour that I was concerned about was the pale appearance of the patient in front of me.
It was most likely due to an iron deficiency that was affecting the production of her blood. And it is the iron content of the red soil that makes the anemic mouth water.
Iron deficiency is very common in South Africa. According to a 2019 study, more than a fifth of Mzanzi’s teenagers suffer from this silent disease.
Another study concluded that up to half of children under 1 year and 44% of pregnant women can be anemic due a deficiency in iron.
Unfortunately, some people are praising geophagia (the medical term for eating soil) as something natural, citing the fact that throughout the ages, cultures from across the world have engaged in these clay cuisines.
They correctly state that soil contains the minerals that are usually deficient in the diet (like iron and calcium) – hence the craving. But they fail to mention that soil is also packed with the goodness of animal feces, parasites and a culinary spread of bacteria and viruses.
I prescribed some iron supplements for my patient. A month later she was back and delighted. “I don’t eat soil anymore!” She was more energetic and didn’t suffer from constant headaches.
Knowledge about the cause of her condition broke the addictive cycle of poor medical care.
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