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I've been on a pro-biotic researching mood these past few days. I'm wondering if maybe adding a pinch of soil from a wooded area to water or food once a day might have some real benefits?

I think it makes sense to consume very small amounts. Our food is too clean today. Paleolithic people certainly would of ate trace amounts...

anybody here eat dirt? I know this kind of question has been asked before but its always more interesting to get new perspectives.

http://paleohacks.com/questions/42627/eating-dirt-for-gut-health#axzz26U9zKIUp

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Absolutely. Our body chemistry and the environment of invisible dirt and bacteria around us is hugely complex and I'm sure we don't understand the majority of it. In this context, aggressively trying to remove dirt from our diet is probably a) damaging, you'd need to use chemicals or artificial growing environments, b) unnecessary, as stated, our bodies clearly evolved able to deal with a bit of dirt in its diet.

My guess is that as we evolved with eating dirt as part of our lives we quite possibly have a 'soft dependency' on something in dirt and by agressively removing it from our diet we'll lose out on some particular trace part of our diet.

I don't think you need to go out of your way to add dirt to your diet though.. just don't scrub those vegetables so hard and get it 'naturally'.

(I'd also be concerned that if someone did specifically add it to their diet they'd get far too much of a particular kind of dirt that may be contaminated. I definitely wouldn't want to eat a teaspoon of dirt from my London city house back yard, but I'm more than happy eating a bit of dirt attached to a potato that was grown organically in a field in the countryside)

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There's anthrax spores in soil and parasites.

But I can see why this might be very beneficial.

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I understand the thinking behind it as well. Kinda takes me back to the days of "rubbing some dirt" in the wounds or in baseball how I preferred dirt to batting gloves. I guess I've always been a little Paleo.

-Matt
PhysiqueRescue.com

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Look up living clay

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I would not eat dirt straight out of the yard. Ever had tapeworms? They are the devil!!

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And yet some people still willingly ingest tapeworms :P Tapeworms are pretty ubiquitous though so one could make the argument that tapeworms are a normal part of human physiology. – BoneBrothFast Sep 17 at 14:25

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