I have Iron Deficiency Anemia. My body doesn’t have enough iron so I carve things that are not really food.
certain disease-causing variant genes were found to have become more common in African-Americans after their ancestors reached American shores — possibly because they presented greater benefits, according to an article published by the team in Genome Research.
In the early 1960's, when Dr. Gerald W. Deas was an intern in the obstetrics clinic at Kings County Hospital, he discovered that many black women he treated ate an unusual snack: cubes of laundry starch. The practice was believed to be a holdover from women who ate clay in Africa, but Dr. Deas quickly found that the ingested starch often caused anemia because it interfered with the body's ability to produce iron.
Getting black women to stop eating starch became a seven-year crusade for the young doctor, one that proved successful and brought him national attention. In the three decades since, Dr. Deas (pronounced Dees) centered his practice of medicine in a smaller, but very appreciative arena: Jamaica, Queens.
Dr. Deas became ''everybody's doctor'' after his seven-year campaign against Argo starch -- the only company to make laundry starch in an edible form. Eating the starch was a substitute for eating clay, which for generations was considered a delicacy among blacks and some whites in the South. As time passed, black women -- especially those in the North -- started eating starch because it was easier to come by and had the same gritty texture. ''It's not a strange phenomenon,'' Dr. Deas said. ''It's an oral satisfaction.''
To educate the black women about the dangerous effects of ingesting starch, he designed and distributed pamphlets, wrote columns in The Amsterdam News, appeared on local radio programs and, on television, filmed 23 segments for ''The McCreary Report.''
''Every place you would go, black women were eating laundry starch,'' said Dr. Deas, who added that articles about the habit had appeared in medical journals for 75 years. ''Nobody attacked the company; all they did was write about the strange behavior of black women. I attacked the company.''
In 1977, Best Foods, which owned Argo starch, began warning on its label that the product was unfit to eat. The company also started making the starch in powdered form, not as appealing as the cubes. Today the problem is virtually nonexistent.
In 1985, the Food and Drug Administration gave Dr. Deas a special award for his efforts..
Sometimes when genuine dirt is not available, some women have been known to eat corn starch or baking soda as a temporary substitute.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbG6XSkBb_s