Editor’s note: The UK’s Food Standards Authority and Health Security Agency both advise against eating clay, soil or earth. Links to their guidance are included in this article.
When I ask people if they have ever eaten soil before, they tend to give me a strange look. But geophagy – the deliberate ingestion of any kind of soil – is a practice that archaeological evidence from Kalambo Falls in Zambia suggests has been part of human history for at least 2 million years.
