Craving Earth
Understanding Pica—the Urge to Eat Clay, Starch, Ice, and Chalk
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.
View press and media mentions.
Columbia University Press 2011
Margaret Mead Award, winner
American Anthropological Association and Society for Applied Anthropology
The urge to eat clay, starch, ice and chalk has been a phenomenon among humans, particularly women, for a very long time.
What people are saying
“Young brings a fascinating story from the musty cupboard of old wives’ tales into the bright light of science. With fluid prose, a storyteller’s style, and a restless curiosity, she peels back the surface of a seemingly bizarre and idiosyncratic behavior to produce a marvelous study of social biology with global reach. This is a book that will entertain as it educates, and it will educate everyone who reads it.”
Peter Ellison
Harvard University
Editor-in-chief, American Journal of Human Biology
“Sera L. Young combines a detective’s intuition, a scholar’s diligence, and her own joyful, indefatigable curiosity to unravel one of the oldest and oddest of human mysteries. I devoured this book like an amylophage on a laundry starch bender.”
Mary Roach
Author of Stiff and Packing for Mars
“Craving Earth is compelling, encyclopedic, and distinctively quirky-an engaging account of eating, soil chemistry, history, religion, ethnography, nutrition, and the social media. It is a book to inspire students and capture the imagination of any reader of the mysteries of geophagia and the idiosyncracies of social life.”
Lenore Manderson
Monash University
Editor, Medical Anthropology
“This marvelous book takes the reader on a fascinating historical, literary, and scientific safari. Craving Earth is surely the most in-depth, revealing, and readable publication ever undertaken on geophagia and other aspects of pica. A must read for experts, while also a most enjoyable read for anyone else.”
Michael Latham
Cornell University
“The human focus of Young’s book provides a welcome counterpoint to the strictly medical focus currently available.”
David L. Browman
Washington University in St. Louis
“A fascinating romp through the history of pica, an eye-opener for the geophagist, and an elegant piece of quantitative evolutionary analysis. Young has produced an engaging, fast-moving text anchored to rich appendices that document pica in history and literature, its prevalence across human populations and subpopulations, and its association with micronutrient deficiencies.”
Monique Borgerhoff Mulder
University of California, Davis
“Young writes like a dream. This masterful work draws upon data, insights, and perspectives from anthropology, history, public health, nutrition, and medicine to offer fascinating answers. A book you’ll never forget!”
Carole Browner
University of California, Los Angeles
“Fascinating! With wit and keen scientific insight, Sera L. Young has written the landmark study of pica. It is sure to be a classic in anthropology and nutrition for a long time to come.”
Gretel H. Pelto
Cornell University
“Quirkily informative.”
Adam Kirsch
Barnes & Noble Review
“Accessible and engaging. A valuable teaching tool… and a fascinating and well-told story.”
Deborah L. Crooks
Journal of Human Biology
“A concise, critical summary of what we do and don’t know about eating earth, grounded in an exhaustive search for relevant literature and [Young’s] own fieldwork in Zanzibar.”
Jeremy MacClancy
Times Higher Education
“Accessible.”
Sacramento News and Review
“The work serves a very important purpose.”
Cornell Daily Sun
“Highly recommended for reading by both interested academics and nonspecialists.”
Peter W. Abrahams
Quarterly Review of Biology
“Brilliant and very readable.”
Gastronomica
“Completely original, well-written, wide-net book about the craving for and ingesting of non foods, known as pica.”
Food Museum Blog
“There’s a lot to learn in Craving Earth.”
James Gorman
The New York Times
