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this post was submitted on 18 May 2026
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Today I Learned
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we're getting punked, right? this is citogenesis? someone just made it up? does anyone have a primary source??
Pica is the name to Google
NYT is a reliable source.
Absolutely. Always on the right side of history.
I don't have a source, but when I was younger there were a few black kids in my school from super poor families, and their parents would put sugar and spices in clay for them for breakfast. It had some flavor and filled them up, even if there wasn't much nutritional value.
Then they finally added breakfast (instead of just lunch) to the free meal program for poor families when I was in late elementary, and they'd just eat at school.
A lot of kids only reliably get meals from school. In college, I got involved in a program with the food bank where we'd go to schools during their last period on Fridays and place backpacks full of food in the lockers of children from the poorest families. The blue bags we used were cheap and obvious, and we'd frequently find the previous week's bag still full. The kids were too embarrassed to get on the bus with the bags that identified them as poor.
So we had a fundraiser to buy 3 cheap but normal identical backpacks for each kid in the program. One for their everyday use, and 2 for the weekend food (we'd drop off a new one and take the previous week's bag for refilling). That way they'd swap their regular bookbag in their locker for the food bag and nothing looked unusual on the bus ride home.
I hadn't thought about that in a while. I need to make a donation to the food bank.
Also - give the food bank money, not food. They can buy food cheaper than you can, and they know what they actually need.
Ok, but why not, for example, wood, straw? Them are mostly inert and even somewhat healthy. I don't know about clay specifically but eating pebbles exposes you to high levels of toxic minerals.
People who are soo poor they've resorted to eating clay to feel full may not be in a position to know the healthiest way to temporarily the body into thinking it's not hungry.
Tyfys 🫡. I will need to join my local food bank as well