Do you know about 'Mud cookies' for starving Haitian ?

What are "mud cookies?"

Mud cookies ("bonbon de terres") are sun-dried pancakes or cookies made of clay mud, vegetable shortening, and salt. They are sold in poorer parts of Haiti, and have little or no nutritional value.

Why do Haitians eat mud cookies?

In general, Haitian people eat mud cookies, because they are much cheaper than bread and more filling as they take longer to digest. Some Haitian women also consume mud cookies as a calcium supplement critical for fetal development.

Below is an article (Associated Press) written in 2008 on Haitians eating mud cookies in Cité Soleil.

Poor Haitians Resort to Eating Dirt

- Jonathan M. Katz in Port-au-Prince, Haiti Associated Press

January 30, 2008

It was lunch time in one of Haiti's worst slums, and Charlene Dumas was eating mud.

With food prices rising, Haiti's poorest can't afford even a daily plate of rice, and some must take desperate measures to fill their bellies.

Charlene, 16 with a month-old son, has come to rely on a traditional Haitian remedy for hunger pangs: cookies made of dried yellow dirt from the country's central plateau.

The mud has long been prized by pregnant women and children here as an antacid and source of calcium. But in places such as Cité Soleil, the oceanside slum where Charlene shares a two-room house with her baby, five siblings, and two unemployed parents, cookies made of dirt, salt, and vegetable shortening have become a regular meal.

"When my mother does not cook anything, I have to eat them three times a day," Charlene said. Her baby, named Woodson, lay still across her lap, looking even thinner than the slim 6 pounds, 3 ounces (2.7 kilograms, 85 grams) he weighed at birth.

Though she likes their buttery, salty taste, Charlene said the cookies also give her stomach pains. "When I nurse, the baby sometimes seems colicky too," she said.

Food Prices Up

Food prices around the world have spiked because of higher oil prices, needed for fertilizer, irrigation, and transportation. Prices for basic ingredients such as corn and wheat are also up sharply, and the increasing global demand for biofuels is pressuring food markets as well.

The problem is particularly dire in the Caribbean, where island nations depend on imports and food prices are up 40 percent in places.

The global price hikes, together with floods and crop damage from the 2007 hurricane season, prompted the UN Food and Agriculture Agency to declare states of emergency in Haiti and several other Caribbean countries.

(Related: "Photos: Storm Noel Hits Caribbean; Mexico Floods" [November 2, 2007].)

Caribbean leaders held an emergency summit in December to discuss cutting food taxes and creating large regional farms to reduce dependence on imports.

At the market in the La Saline slum, two cups of rice now sell for 60 U.S. cents, up 10 U.S. cents from December and 50 percent from a year ago.

Beans, condensed milk, and fruit have gone up at a similar rate, and even the price of the edible clay has risen over the past year by almost U.S. $1.50. Dirt to make a hundred cookies now costs U.S. $5, the cookie makers say.

Still, at about 5 cents apiece, the cookies are a bargain compared to food staples. About 80 percent of people in Haiti live on less than $U.S. 2 a day and a tiny elite controls the economy.

Making the Cookies

Merchants truck the dirt from the central town of Hinche to the La Saline market, a maze of tables of vegetables and meat swarming with flies. Women buy the dirt, then process it into mud cookies in places such as Fort Dimanche, a nearby shantytown.

(See a map of Haiti.)

Carrying buckets of dirt and water up ladders to the roof of the former prison for which the slum is named, they strain out rocks and clumps on a sheet, and stir in shortening and salt. Then they pat the mixture into mud cookies and leave them to dry under the scorching sun.

The finished cookies are carried in buckets to markets or sold on the streets.

A reporter sampling a cookie found that it had a smooth consistency and sucked all the moisture out of the mouth as soon as it touched the tongue. For hours, an unpleasant taste of dirt lingered.

Health Effects

Assessments of the health effects are mixed. Dirt can contain deadly parasites or toxins, but can also strengthen the immunity of fetuses in the womb to certain diseases, said Gerald N. Callahan, an immunology professor at Colorado State University who has studied geophagy, the scientific name for dirt-eating.

Haitian doctors say depending on the cookies for sustenance risks malnutrition.

"Trust me, if I see someone eating those cookies, I will discourage it," said Gabriel Thimothee, the executive director of Haiti's health ministry.

Marie Noel, 40, sells the cookies in a market to provide for her seven children. Her family also eats them.

"I'm hoping one day I'll have enough food to eat, so I can stop eating these," she said. "I know it's not good for me."

How are mud cookies made?

1. Hungry Haitian children and adolescents dig up mud and dirt in the countryside. Bags of mud and dirt are transported to a nearby town and sold.

2. The mud cookie "dough" is made by adding water, shortening, and salt to the original extract. Local women stir the dough mixture until it becomes semi-liquefied.

3. Then the dough mixture is spread onto a flat surface with a spoon, and is allowed to dry under the sun.

4. Finished mud cookies are sold on the street in slum districts such as Cité Soleil.

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