Why people think Mel "food of the gods": the taste perversion or need?

It is well known that in the world there are people who like have a piece of chalk. On the Internet you can even find entire communities where they are going "melody", discussing the taste of products, and share contacts sellers the most delicious varieties. From the outside it looks weird and even crazy, but if you look, there is nothing extraordinary eating chalk is the food is a substance, people used always. So why do people eat chalk and is it safe?

Eating chalk in the society is considered something abnormal. Probably everyone in childhood was a classmate who loves to chew on chalk and went about it the whole legend. By the way, teachers are not too welcome this hobby and at all times in every way fought with him. Eat chalk but not only out of mischief.

Many doctors say that a person can experience attraction to his eating, as this is dictated by the problems in the body. Lack of calcium and iron, metabolic disorders, thyroid disease — causes thrust to the white mineral can be too much. That's why experts suggest to anyone who has felt a strong inclination to chew on chalk, before to make plans, to consult a doctor.

But not even always the most accurate analyses can explain the desire to eat chalk. Often the need goes beyond physiology and even psychology, so to explain it only in terms of a medicine is not possible.

The official science has a name for eating chalk — the pica. However, this term is very broad and covers also the eating of clay, earth, and any and all minerals that are in the earth's crust. In a society that lives by hunting and gathering, this was a common phenomenon in the world still live tribes, the menu of which is the food of mineral origin.

It looks like AMAP — a dish of earth

The most famous example pica — is Indonesian tribes in the diet consists of food that has a name AMAP. They are made from soil collected in rice fields and carefully cleaned from stones and debris. It is a kind of earthen rolls, which are baked and smoked in clay pots.

Pica often occurs in pregnant women is one of the ways to fill in the body of a lack of calcium, and many important minerals. But there are people who eat chalk just because it they are madly in love. Many are beginning to do melaetsa in childhood and do not change it life.

One of those who like such an extravagant meal that called itself Eugenia, told reporters about how I tried the chalk for the first time, why it has continued for many years and why I broke up with this habit.

Then Eugene came into the office supply store and bought a box of chalk. She confessed that she once ate three pieces of chalk, and seemed to her to be "food of the gods". Since then, the girl has always volunteered for the lesson to go over with chalk and nibbled his way eagerly. Mom learned about addiction daughter warned her new Hobbies, citing the fact that Mel can cause the deposition of kidney stones.

To say that health problems Evgenia started because of the love of chalk, it is impossible, but to remove that option is not worth it. In any case, if this thrust appeared to be screened.

If the fans to chew Mel bought it at office supply stores, now there are specialty stores. The owner of this business, Anastasia, told the press that it all started with the fact that it is during pregnancy, she ate chalk. Then it's gone, but had the idea to start selling chalk food to those who need it.

Anastasia says that best buy varieties that are crispy and contain small grains. Strangely enough, but in honor gourmets not a fruit and not even the nutty flavors, and the so-called "dusty" variety, with a touch of whitewash and a normal building concrete.

The owner of the shop edible chalk claims that there are up to 50 grams of such product per day is not harmful. As for the use Anastasia prefers not to talk, as it believes that the full amount of information can only own scientists.

Scientists believe that eating chalk is useful if the human body is actually lacking some substance. But the benefits of this will always be less than the risk to cause serious damage. The pica can cause diseases of the gastrointestinal tract, calcium deposits in the lungs, kidneys and liver, and in some cases can even cause diabetes.

Separate risk to humans impurities that are inevitably fall into the chalk of the environment. Including heavy metals that can cause serious and even fatal diseases and just poisoning. No matter how advertised their goods sellers of edible chalk, absolutely pure product is almost impossible to find.

The most dangerous to humans chalk is considered to be the most affordable — of stationery. It is prepared with the addition of gypsum and glue different, which increases the risk of poisoning or deposits of harmful substances in vital organs.

Sometimes a passion for pica's not talking about the lack of calcium and about mental illness. The doctors know a lot of cases when eating chalk became one of the symptoms of mental retardation, and even schizophrenia. But melongena is one of the infrequent symptoms and suspected mental illness of a person on the basis of this phenomenon is impossible.

But what to do if the craving for eating chalk simply irresistible? Doctors recommend in this case to go to the hospital, and as a safer alternative to consider replacement of chalk on vitamin-mineral complexes, which include calcium gluconate.

Mel is not the strange substance that people eat. Much more unusual and risky can be considered eating soap.