Within Western industrialized societies, recent medical literature on pica is dominated not so much by geophagy as by pagophagia and amylophagia. The term “pagophagia,” first used in 1969 by Charles Colt-man, a U. S. Air Force physician, refers to the compulsive consumption of ice and other frozen substances. Some, however, do not view pagophagia as a form of pica because ice (and ice water) consumption can be a positive measure in controlling body weight and addictions such as the use of tobacco. In addition, of course, chewing ice is more socially acceptable within industrialized countries than eating dirt. Like geophagy, pagophagia is strongly associated by many researchers with iron and other mineral deficiencies.
Amylophagia, by contrast, is the eating of laundry starch, which is associated almost exclusively with women. It was first observed in rural areas of the southeastern United States, where it was thought by some to have replaced dirt eating. As we have already noted, Hunter described a process of cultural diffusion and change occurring as geophagy from Africa was brought first to the southern United States:
Next came the northward migration of blacks to the urban ghettos of Cleveland, Chicago, New York, and Detroit. Such migrants ask their southern relatives to mail them boxes of clay for consumption during pregnancy. At this state, however, the forces of culture conflict come to the fore: lack of local clay in the concrete jungles of the North, pressures of poverty, and stress on kinship ties with the South lead to the consumption of laundry starch replacing traditional geophagy. But micronutrient minerals are totally lacking in the starch. Calories apart, nutritional inputs are zero; gastric irritation is caused. A cultural practice is now divorced from nutritional empiricism; cultural adjustment to socioenvironmental change has broken down, and atrophy and decay are the result. (1973:193)
Perhaps significantly, a similarity between dirt and laundry starch in texture (although not in taste) has been noted by investigators. The reasons cited by women for consuming laundry starch include the alleviation of nausea and vomiting associated with pregnancy and various folk beliefs, found largely among African-Americans, that consuming starch during pregnancy helps the baby “slide out” during delivery, promotes a healthy baby, or a whiter (or darker) baby (O’Rourke et al. 1967).
Like pagophagia and geophagia, as well as other forms of pica, amylophagia has also been associated with iron deficiency. Deleterious consequences include impacted bowels and intestinal obstructions.
World History
