What are the pros and cons of eating earth (soil)?

Question

I wonder if there are any benefits to eat earth. What I mean by earth is the topsoil that is sometimes on vegetable (I eat organic vegetables and some of them like spinach are full of topsoil).

I found this article (a study about why people, in certain culture, eat earth) but it doesn't clearly answer my question as it's about clay and not topsoil. Topsoil has a highest concentration of organic matter than clay.

I wonder if we can digest the soil nutrient (Phosphorus, Potassium, Calcium, Magnesium, Manganese, Zinc, Copper) just as we would if there were coming from vegetable and fruits.

What are the other pros and cons of eating earth (soil)? (I am aware of the cons about parasite and bacteria but my question is not about these risks. It's about nutritive value of earth.)

Answer 1

The article (a PDF can be found here) suggests that this happens neither for feeding reasons (to get your belly filled, when anything else is available) nor that this is done for supplemental reasons.

They suggest that this happens more for protective reasons. In the abstract they write:

Our results indicate that human geophagy is best explained as providing protection from dietary chemicals, parasites, and pathogens, whereas animal geophagy may involve both micronutrient acquisition and protection.

In the paper they give a few examples for this. First the earth eaten is usually digged up from deeper layers of the ground and sometimes even cooked. Then they bring in the example of people, which eat soil, when they have gastrointestinal problems as a kind of medicine to calm down the problems.

In my opinion there is not much nutritional value in eating soil. Organic compounds can usually not be metabolized (for example we don't have the possibility to break down cellulose). I am not sure, if we can get minerals from clay into our body, since a lot of them is present in soil as unsoluble minerals.

Answer 2

A/ stronger immune system. children without soil environments are weaker, and the immune memory doesn't last forever across the decades, so it's good for adults too. http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/07/16/537075018/dirt-is-good-why-kids-need-exposure-to-germs

B/ Stronger bones and nerves and mineral content. We get calcium from milk, according to our culture, which is stupid because, if you have a soft water source or rain, milk is more harmful for adults that water treated with clay/chalk etc. Magnesium is important to nerves and it's one of the biggest mineral defficiencies in people. the main mineral that doesn't dissolve well is Silicon Si (same reason why there wouldnt be silicon based life in a water soluble animal). If you eat chalky clay, your body can dissolve it with the HCL ann digestive acids, and get many times more calcium than from milk. the body contains 1.2 kilos of calcium. crystals with lattice energy dissolve less easily than less structured stones, permeability helps a lot to dissolve stones/sands, so small particles like clays release a lot more minerals in water than rocks and sands do.

C/ better digestion. If you leave a bit of soil microbiota on your potatoes, and make a soup, and let that soup ferment for a few hours, you will have many times more microbiota in your gut that can eat potatos, than if the potatos were totally washed of soil. https://www.thecandidadiet.com/soil-based-organisms/