The mud pies above are baking in the sun in Cite Soleil. These mud pies will be consumed to diminish hunger pains. The boy pictured below on his homemade scooter, should not have to depend on mud for his hunger.
The incidence of childhood obesity is rapidly rising throughout the resource-rich world. The obesity epidemic is evident in the United States just 90 minutes from these mud pies and hungry kids.
In just two decades, the prevalence of overweight doubled for U.S. children ages 6 to 11--and tripled for American teenagers. About one-third of U.S. children are overweight or at risk of becoming overweight. In total, about 25 million U.S. children and adolescents are overweight or nearly overweight.
Go to State of Denial or scroll to bottom of this post to see Jonathan Katz’s article.
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11 comments:
Anonymous said...
Whoever wrote this on "Mud pies" should check their facts, Haitians do not eat mud pies to calm hunger, it is more a craving and most of the time, pregnant women only like to eat it and sometimes the children that eat it usually get it from their pregnant mom. Haitian do not it this out of hunger, plus it is not regular mud, they get it from a special place, it's not the mud from the street.
John A. Carroll said...
Dear Anonymous,
I wrote this post.
The mud pies are eaten to calm hunger. They help fill the stomach and decrease the hunger pain.
Pregnant women around the world eat all sorts of odd material. There are different medical terms used to describe this behavior.
However, as you state, pregnant mothers feed this mud to their children...and the children are not pregnant. They are hungry. Non-pregnant adults in Soleil eat this mud also. I've seen it.
Next time you take a nibble of one of these delicious mud pies or offer one to your child or to a pregnant relative of yours, let me know.
You are right that the people in Soleil have a craving...a craving to be treated like human beings.
John
Anonymous said...
If I want to get some help to Haiti what would be a good way to do this?
John A. Carroll said...
Please email me and let me know what kind of help you would like to provide.
Thanks.
John
haitianhearts@gmail.com
Anonymous said...
let me guess, you must be part of the Haitian upperclass to obliviously ignore the realities of life around you. The women, children and families that eat this do it because they dont have another choice so its not a craving. this is how far starvation will take someone. The women and children dont like eating this but they do because they dont have anything else to eat. It doesnt matter where they get the dirt or mud its still dirt and mud and no one absolutely no one should be eating dirt. to call it a craving and to say its special mud is the statement of the most stupid, foolish, ignorant, and idiotic person to walk the earth. to ignore this type of suffering and pretend that it doesnt exist, to downplay this or that its not as bad as it seems is just ridiculous beyond reasoning. Some people need to get out of oz and out of their fantasy world and open their eyes to what is really going on in this world.
Anonymous said...
The Haitian students in my classroom when I taught in Miami, (recent immigrants who arrived in the boat lift of 92) used to eat the chalk from my blackboard. I was told it was a craving caused by lack of calcium. But this is something I experienced. They were all but starved when they arrived.
Anonymous said...
I would like to purchase a mud pie to try for myself, to see how edible it is, to find out what it tastes like. Would there be any way for me to obtain a mud pie or several from Haiti? This could also be a great way for some money to reach Haitians. They could export some of the pies they prepare to other parts of the world. Can you comment on this, or advise how I could best order a shipment of mud pies? Thanks. Contact me at my email address.
John A. Carroll said...
Dear Random,
I think the best way for you to check out the mud pies would be to travel to Soleil. You will find many drying in the sun and I am sure the owner would allow you to try one. Then you could make up your own mind regarding buying more.
John
Anonymous said...
The poster of this article is mistaken. The mud they gather is from a clean healthy place, and the skin on these children attest to their health. It is not to fill an empty stomach because they have nothing else to eat. Mud contains vital nutrients and minerals.
When I was a child it was common place to see pregnant women and children who had regular meals every day eating mud. Their children were born healthy and strong and their skin was amazingly clear.
Clean, nutritious, mineral filled mud is delicious, filling and a healthy additive to a good diet.
Now, let's see who goes into those separate places and destroys the mud with chemicals, urine and debri because they think mud filled with quality ingredients we are supposed to find in our daily foods is not what these people should be eating.
Is the mud a healthy additive to the diet? Look at the skin of these people. Healthy skin. Look at the teeth of one of the children someone dared to use as an example of a child that eats the wrong thing to fill them up. The condition of teeth and skin are a real indicator of whether or not a diet is a healthy one.
John A. Carroll said...
Dear Readers,
I posted the above comment to illustrate how someone can rationalize Haitians eating dirt.
Dr. John
Anonymous said...
I would just like to say that based on reading various articles on Haitian mud pies/cookies, this is what I gathered. Yes, the Haitian women in the slums used to eat these mud pies (mixed with salt and butter for at least some semblance of nutrition) when they're pregnant. For lack of "real" nutrition, they believed that this would at least help the baby somehow. But NOW a lot of people there are eating them because of food shortages (rising food costs etc). It's no longer just for pregnant women, and these people are eating them to stave off hunger. They really ARE starving...
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Friday, January 25, 2008
State of Denial
Posted on Tue, Jan. 29, 2008
Poor Haitians resort to eating dirt
By JONATHAN M. KATZ
It was lunchtime in one of Haiti's worst slums, and Charlene Dumas was eating mud. With food prices rising, Haiti's poorest can't afford even a daily plate of rice, and some take desperate measures to fill their bellies. Charlene, 16 with a 1-month-old son, has come to rely on a traditional Haitian remedy for hunger pangs: cookies made of dried yellow dirt from the country's central plateau.
The mud has long been prized by pregnant women and children here as an antacid and source of calcium. But in places like Cite Soleil, the oceanside slum where Charlene shares a two-room house with her baby, five siblings and two unemployed parents, cookies made of dirt, salt and vegetable shortening have become a regular meal.
"When my mother does not cook anything, I have to eat them three times a day," Charlene said. Her baby, named Woodson, lay still across her lap, looking even thinner than the slim 6 pounds 3 ounces he weighed at birth.
Though she likes their buttery, salty taste, Charlene said the cookies also give her stomach pains. "When I nurse, the baby sometimes seems colicky too," she said.
Food prices around the world have spiked because of higher oil prices, needed for fertilizer, irrigation and transportation. Prices for basic ingredients such as corn and wheat are also up sharply, and the increasing global demand for biofuels is pressuring food markets as well.
The problem is particularly dire in the Caribbean, where island nations depend on imports and food prices are up 40 percent in places.
The global price hikes, together with floods and crop damage from the 2007 hurricane season, prompted the U.N. Food and Agriculture Agency to declare states of emergency in Haiti and several other Caribbean countries. Caribbean leaders held an emergency summit in December to discuss cutting food taxes and creating large regional farms to reduce dependence on imports.
At the market in the La Saline slum, two cups of rice now sell for 60 cents, up 10 cents from December and 50 percent from a year ago. Beans, condensed milk and fruit have gone up at a similar rate, and even the price of the edible clay has risen over the past year by almost $1.50. Dirt to make 100 cookies now costs $5, the cookie makers say.
Still, at about 5 cents apiece, the cookies are a bargain compared to food staples. About 80 percent of people in Haiti live on less than $2 a day and a tiny elite controls the economy.
Merchants truck the dirt from the central town of Hinche to the La Saline market, a maze of tables of vegetables and meat swarming with flies. Women buy the dirt, then process it into mud cookies in places such as Fort Dimanche, a nearby shanty town.
Carrying buckets of dirt and water up ladders to the roof of the former prison for which the slum is named, they strain out rocks and clumps on a sheet, and stir in shortening and salt. Then they pat the mixture into mud cookies and leave them to dry under the scorching sun.
The finished cookies are carried in buckets to markets or sold on the streets.
A reporter sampling a cookie found that it had a smooth consistency and sucked all the moisture out of the mouth as soon as it touched the tongue. For hours, an unpleasant taste of dirt lingered.
Assessments of the health effects are mixed. Dirt can contain deadly parasites or toxins, but can also strengthen the immunity of fetuses in the womb to certain diseases, said Gerald N. Callahan, an immunology professor at Colorado State University who has studied geophagy, the scientific name for dirt-eating.
Haitian doctors say depending on the cookies for sustenance risks malnutrition.
"Trust me, if I see someone eating those cookies, I will discourage it," said Dr. Gabriel Thimothee, executive director of Haiti's health ministry.
Marie Noel, 40, sells the cookies in a market to provide for her seven children. Her family also eats them.
"I'm hoping one day I'll have enough food to eat, so I can stop eating these," she said. "I know it's not good for me."
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