Author Topic: Haiti’s poor resort to eating mud as prices rise- Mud Cookies  (Read 7907 times)

SF1900

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Haiti’s poor resort to eating mud as prices rise- Mud Cookies
« on: February 11, 2013, 03:13:52 PM »
Haiti’s poor resort to eating mud as prices rise
Cookies made of dried yellow dirt become sustenance, livelihood, concern

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — It was lunchtime 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 take desperate measures to fill their bellies.

Charlene, 16 with a 1-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 like Cite 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," Dumas said. Her baby, named Woodson, lay still across her lap, looking even thinner than the 6 pounds, 3 ounces 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.

States of emergency
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 U.N. Food and Agriculture Agency to declare states of emergency in Haiti and several other Caribbean countries.

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

Dirt cookies become bargains
At the market in the La Saline slum, two cups of rice now sell for 60 cents, up 10 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 $1.50. Dirt to make 100 cookies now costs $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 $2 a day and a tiny elite controls the economy.

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 shanty town.

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.

An unpleasant taste
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.

Assessments of the health effects are mixed. Dirt can contain deadly parasites or toxins, but it 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 Dr. Gabriel Thimothee, 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."
X

Marty Champions

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Re: Haiti’s poor resort to eating mud as prices rise- Mud Cookies
« Reply #1 on: February 11, 2013, 03:16:54 PM »
they need to eat more pine needles and tree bark IMHO

also some good ole celtic sea salt

most greenage is edible, why dont they eat all that marijuan?
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Re: Haiti’s poor resort to eating mud as prices rise- Mud Cookies
« Reply #2 on: February 11, 2013, 03:21:43 PM »
Sucks for them that Wyclef Jean ran off with all that earthquake relief money.

Marty Champions

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Re: Haiti’s poor resort to eating mud as prices rise- Mud Cookies
« Reply #3 on: February 11, 2013, 03:23:22 PM »
Sucks for them that Wyclef Jean ran off with all that earthquake relief money.
we dont hear enough about wyclef in the news

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Re: Haiti’s poor resort to eating mud as prices rise- Mud Cookies
« Reply #4 on: February 11, 2013, 03:38:31 PM »
we dont hear enough about wyclef in the news



He's hanging out with Dr Alban! https://twitter.com/DrAlbanOfficial
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arce1988

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Re: Haiti’s poor resort to eating mud as prices rise- Mud Cookies
« Reply #5 on: February 11, 2013, 03:40:25 PM »
:(

SF1900

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Re: Haiti’s poor resort to eating mud as prices rise- Mud Cookies
« Reply #6 on: February 11, 2013, 03:43:04 PM »
Man, how does a country get that poor?  :-\ :-\
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arce1988

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Re: Haiti’s poor resort to eating mud as prices rise- Mud Cookies
« Reply #7 on: February 11, 2013, 03:45:11 PM »
Nicaragua is super poor too

HockeyFightFan

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Re: Haiti’s poor resort to eating mud as prices rise- Mud Cookies
« Reply #8 on: February 11, 2013, 03:47:27 PM »
Call liberal crybaby Sean Penn, we're all stocked up on "We Don't Give a Fuck" here.

Irongrip400

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Re: Haiti’s poor resort to eating mud as prices rise- Mud Cookies
« Reply #9 on: February 11, 2013, 03:53:40 PM »
Like the Russian famines of the early 20th century. Too bad they don't have a population that could afford to lose 20 million or so people.

Obvious Gimmick

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Re: Haiti’s poor resort to eating mud as prices rise- Mud Cookies
« Reply #10 on: February 11, 2013, 03:57:54 PM »
Rumor has it that Haiti was damned because they chose voodoo over Christianity.


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Jadeveon Clowney

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Re: Haiti’s poor resort to eating mud as prices rise- Mud Cookies
« Reply #11 on: February 11, 2013, 04:00:49 PM »
What's the date of this story, shortstack?

Haiti’s poor resort to eating mud as prices rise
Cookies made of dried yellow dirt become sustenance, livelihood, concern

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — It was lunchtime 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 take desperate measures to fill their bellies.

Charlene, 16 with a 1-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 like Cite 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," Dumas said. Her baby, named Woodson, lay still across her lap, looking even thinner than the 6 pounds, 3 ounces 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.

States of emergency
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 U.N. Food and Agriculture Agency to declare states of emergency in Haiti and several other Caribbean countries.

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

Dirt cookies become bargains
At the market in the La Saline slum, two cups of rice now sell for 60 cents, up 10 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 $1.50. Dirt to make 100 cookies now costs $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 $2 a day and a tiny elite controls the economy.

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 shanty town.

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.

An unpleasant taste
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.

Assessments of the health effects are mixed. Dirt can contain deadly parasites or toxins, but it 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 Dr. Gabriel Thimothee, 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."

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Re: Haiti’s poor resort to eating mud as prices rise- Mud Cookies
« Reply #12 on: February 11, 2013, 04:31:59 PM »
why dont they eat tree leaves and sprouts, moss are they so dumb that they dont save the seeds and plant new food?
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Re: Haiti’s poor resort to eating mud as prices rise- Mud Cookies
« Reply #13 on: February 11, 2013, 04:35:24 PM »
I have a friend who's currently traveling around the world and is literally on his way to Haiti from Mexico at this moment. I will send him a message and see if he can bring some supplies.

Schmoff

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Re: Haiti’s poor resort to eating mud as prices rise- Mud Cookies
« Reply #14 on: February 11, 2013, 04:39:23 PM »
why black people can not develop civilization on their own?

Voice of Doom

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Re: Haiti’s poor resort to eating mud as prices rise- Mud Cookies
« Reply #15 on: February 11, 2013, 05:05:23 PM »
The story is flawed in it's explanation of the higher food cost.  All commodities cost more because of massive printing by the big Central Banks, Fed, ECB and Japan.  The first wave of exported inflation led to the Spring uprisings in the Middle East...now to the Caribbean, Central America and Venzuela.


MikMaq

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Re: Haiti’s poor resort to eating mud as prices rise- Mud Cookies
« Reply #16 on: February 11, 2013, 05:08:01 PM »
Man, how does a country get that poor?  :-\ :-\
You have a slave revolt that keeps your country black listed until 1980 or so.

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Re: Haiti’s poor resort to eating mud as prices rise- Mud Cookies
« Reply #17 on: February 11, 2013, 05:08:13 PM »
why dont they make a big spirulina pool that algae replicates itself, free food for all , you just need flowing water, you could have just one big ppool of free food, are these people choosing to be ignorant?
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el numero uno

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Re: Haiti’s poor resort to eating mud as prices rise- Mud Cookies
« Reply #18 on: February 11, 2013, 05:19:50 PM »
Man, how does a country get that poor?  :-\ :-\

Some groups never evolved.

Schmoff

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Re: Haiti’s poor resort to eating mud as prices rise- Mud Cookies
« Reply #19 on: February 11, 2013, 05:24:19 PM »
Some groups never evolved.

you latino people are not civilized either


el numero uno

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Re: Haiti’s poor resort to eating mud as prices rise- Mud Cookies
« Reply #20 on: February 11, 2013, 05:48:14 PM »
you latino people are not civilized either



exactly

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Re: Haiti’s poor resort to eating mud as prices rise- Mud Cookies
« Reply #21 on: February 11, 2013, 05:55:25 PM »
they could build community farms with left over seeds but they are savage?
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Schmoff

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Re: Haiti’s poor resort to eating mud as prices rise- Mud Cookies
« Reply #22 on: February 11, 2013, 05:57:01 PM »
very very sad.

maybe some nations should colonize them for 2 or 3 generations.



why?

why should any country take responsibility to take care of an independent country which should be fully responsible for their own people's welfare and basic livelihood?


Obvious Gimmick

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Re: Haiti’s poor resort to eating mud as prices rise- Mud Cookies
« Reply #23 on: February 11, 2013, 06:01:44 PM »
The US spends billions killing innocent people and supporting those who do the same thing. To allow those people to starve is embarrassing and against our bullshit "Christian" ideals.

Jadeveon Clowney

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Re: Haiti’s poor resort to eating mud as prices rise- Mud Cookies
« Reply #24 on: February 11, 2013, 06:04:53 PM »
they could build community farms with left over seeds but they are savage?

if you had a good heart failcon, you would go over there and show them the way.  but I am afraid your heart has become cold and hard living in N. Carolina.