Those with long enough memories in this internet-addled age might remember the “Tide pod challenge.” It was a meme of ambiguous irony in which young people dared one another online to put the brightly colored packets used for laundry not in their washing machines, but in their stomachs.
Well, if the New York Post is to be believed, a new trend involves consuming something a properly used Tide pod would be used to remove: dirt.
And unlike with Tide pods, the dirt-eaters seem sincere. The Post reports that, among some health influencers, swallowing soil is no longer a childish transgression but a healthy habit. “Fertility and hormone coach” Stephanie Adler recently urged her TikTok followers to “eat dirt” as a way to “to improve your child’s (and your own) gut health.” Dirt is also being sold on websites such as Amazon. Supposed benefits include better digestion, clearer skin, and even weight loss.
Emphasis on “supposed.” Extravagant claims of the benefits of eating dirt — just pause and consider those words — seem to rely on overinterpretation of studies such as this one, which posit a connection between the health of the soil and the health of the human body. It’s not entirely wrong to worry about the deterioration of modern tillage, and to wonder whether that might ultimately affect us.
But taking that line of argument as far as the dirt-eaters do is self-defeating: If our soil today is so bad, then why would eating it be better? Even the “right” dirt, full of microorganisms, isn’t going to guarantee any kind of positive health outcome, and could well invite some unwanted ones. Ruling those two options out would put us in the hands of the dirt-sellers, which strikes me as inadvisable.
Are there any seeds of truth buried in the dirt? Maybe. Kids today could use more exposure to nature, should go outside and more, and shouldn’t be afraid of getting dirty. (How else will they find a good stick?) All of us could probably improve our diets such that we consume food more recognizable in its provenance from nature. And scientific and health authorities have hardly covered themselves in glory over the past few years, and even the past few decades.
But none of this adds up to a case for eating dirt. This trend — if it is real — shows the limits of pure contrarianism when it comes to health. It’s not enough to embrace something just because the mainstream and experts frown upon it; reasoned judgment must play a role as well. Tide pods were (mostly) a meme, but at least some of the dirt-eaters seem serious. Dirt, for them, fits into “the constant search for diets, superfoods, and small workouts with outsized fitness effects” I wrote about yesterday. They’d be better off pursuing a healthy lifestyle overall than searching for salvation in the soil.