It also occurs in some patients with iron or zinc deficiencies.” ”Īccording to my medical dictionary pica is “the compulsive eating of nonnutritive substances, such as ice, dirt, gravel, flaking paint or plaster, clay, hair, or laundry starch. My mother craved chalk, dry dirt, cornstarch, and even baby powder. One Black female wrote, “ It’s a condition known as pica. The reason they consume these items has little to do with taste, but is primarily physiological. Some Black women call eating cornstarch “addicting.” Others express a strong penchant for kaolin clay, chalk, drywall, or “small powdery rocks.” She added that she’d probably try different brands in the future! She only ate it, she said, because she had bought the box and didn’t want to throw it away, even though it hadn’t cost much money. One such young woman, while eating raw Hodgson Mill cornstarch, explicitly stated she did not like the taste. Nevertheless, many Black women do just that - at home, at work, while visiting a friend at the hospital. It is not advisable to eat large quantities of it raw. I don’t know how they eat as much as they do without drinking water to wash it down with.Ĭornstarch is a thickener used in cooking. I wondered if there was something desirable about its taste, akin to eating raw cookie dough, for example. ![]() ![]() (When cornstarch absorbs moisture from the atmosphere it forms chunks some prefer to eat it that way.) They eat this with a spoon, or by hand when in chunk form, right out of the box.Ĭornstarch looks much like flour or powdered sugar. The first weird “food” item I came across was cornstarch. IT RECENTLY came to my attention that a number of young Black women have unusual eating habits. A bag of kaolin clay for sale at Sweet Auburn Market in AtlantaĪn item that could have been included in Mondo Cane
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