Chicken out

摘要

To adult eyes, eating dirt is disgusting. Nonetheless, young children do it routinely. How harmful the habit truly is has never been established. But Mduduzi Mbuya and Jean Humphrey of Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore, who work with children in Zimbabwe, think it can be very harmful indeed. They suspect, as they write in Maternal and Child Nutrition, that in places like Zimbabwe, where chickens roam freely and what is on the ground is thus full of their droppings, it is responsible for stunting infant growth.