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this post was submitted on 18 May 2026
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Monkeys on Gibraltar do it, too. To treat stomach aches when they ate unhealthy. There is an abundance of bad food for them which they steal from tourists.
Should you start eating dirt now? You shouldn't, scientists say. Germs.
After cooking with high heat there should be no germs left. As stated in the article there are no health risks involved except if you eat such a large amount it blocks your intestines. Also even if you didn't cook it the germs that live in soil are not the same germs that make you sick, those you get from your fellow humans.
Ya, sure, you've obviously never heard of gardia, tetanus, botulism, histoplasmosis, anthrax, E coli, salmonella, and the ever popular listeria. Plus you could pick up a party of parasites and worms.
Very pastoral. Very grounding. Touch grass, acquire necrotizing fasciitis.
All the ones you listed are either:
Not native to soil but may be on soil if faeces got on there Or Not dangerous in soil but will become dangerous if food gets into contact with it before fermenting Or Only dangerous getting into your blood, but not your mouth.
As long as there is no literal poop on the soil you can eat it raw. These people mentioned in the article were digging deep clay which would carry absolutely no risk of faeces contamination.
How would you know that no animal had ever crapped over the clay deposit and had rain drift in durable, long-lasting bacterial spores from the waste whiøe the rain was on its way through the clay to join the groundwater? That a burrowing critter didn’t die just upstream in the ground of where you’re digging? It’s not terribly likely that those would get you sick maybe but ‘absolutely no risk’ is a high bar to clear.
Also there can be other sorts of non-obvious contamination like if there are trace amounts of heavy metals. Kaopectate got sued by California because the clay contained in their popular anti-diarrhea pills had traces of lead, such that the adult version pills would have fifty micrograms of lead a pop or six to twelve micrograms for children. For reference California currently mandates a warning slapped on if a product exposes you to half a microgram of lead per day. It’s difficult to know the provenance and full risks of stuff dug from a hole for a regular person. Even trained people with a lot on the line sometimes screw up and get people hurt.
You are right about the risk of heavy metal contamination so wont comment on that. But if we are speaking about an animal that crapped on top of the clay pile then that should not be an issue. Soil in general but especially clay has an absolutely enormous surface area that adsorbs both bacteria and viruses. That's why ground water is usually safe to drink but surface water is not. A large amount of faeces leaking into the soil water from above would potentially contaminate the water with nitrate which could be a slight cancer risk if consumed in large quantities but there should be no risk of getting infected if you are digging deep unexposed clay, even if an animal crapped on top of the pile. As long as there is no heavy metal contamination eating deep clay is probably safer than eating a wild picked berry.
Clay swells when wet and shrinks when dry, the latter can open up deep fissures in it that act as channels for unfiltered water to flow down deeper than you may expect, leaving aside tectonic activity or other reasons that could cause such penetrations in the ground. The native plants also have impressively deep root systems that can provide similar gaps, and you may never know if it was there or not if the clay got wet again and sealed up the voids along with any presents washed down and absorbed into the clay matrix. It puts a lot of faith in Bo Taylor to break his back digging way way deep beyond the reaches of this above plus the necessary amount for scrubbing whatever waste may have gotten down that far… I agree it’s not especialy likely as far as bacterial infection alone, I just protest at the absolutely no risk formulation. There’s a reason bags of this stuff are sold as ‘novelty items’ rather than going through FDA approval.
Dig in, then. :)
or from animal feces
That's what surprised me; I assumed it was beneficial to the gut biome, but it's baked dead. Maybe there's nutritional benefit?