Mozambique

In Mozambique, sand is sold in little paper cones. To be eaten.

In Maputo, vendors offer sand in shades of yellow, orange and red, wrapped in cones made from newspaper. Customers choose by colour, and each colour is said to taste different. The sand comes from quarries a few dozen kilometres outside the city.

Eating soil and sand has long been practised, particularly by pregnant women. But when a journalist investigated the trade in 2011, the habit had spread to young women who weren’t pregnant. Many ate sand five or six times a day.

Ten years later, researchers bought sand at three of the city’s markets. The trade was still widespread. Most of it was grains of sand, and most of those were quartz. The researchers warn that the quartz grains can wear down teeth and damage the gut.