They're not supposed to taste good. After all, they're called dirt cookies. Bright Hope International, based outside Chicago in Hoffman Estates, Ill., is selling "dirt cookies" as a symbol of poverty around the world. The nonprofit offers a package of six cookies for a donation -- of any size -- but stresses that $50 can provide a Haitian family of six with food for a month and the ability to plant their own garden."Eat dirt so they don't have to," the Web site proclaims.
Food shortages and escalating prices have made the poor on Haiti so desperate they eat the dirt cookies, made of clay, to alleviate hunger pains. Bright Hope's dirt cookies are 100 percent edible but they're not sold for the taste as much as for raising money and spreading awareness. With ingredients like shortening, salt, coffee, buckwheat flour, teff (an Ethiopian grain), cocoa powder, corn starch and terramin clay, the cookies won't tempt your palate, but they will give you a good idea of what poor people in places like Haiti have resorted to eating.
- Mark Hrywna
nonprofit
2 comments:
They really actually kinda taste like PlayDo... nasty stuff, and the taste stays with you... but so does the idea that people actually have to eat stuff that tastes this bad to take away the pain in their stomach's.
The better news though is that 230 families in Haiti will have their food needs taken care of both now (through food aid) and later (through micro loans and agricultural training). That's almost 1,400 starving people in Haiti that we can help today by simply giving a donation and taking a bite out one of these cookies.
You can help at www.brighthope.org/dirt.
The dirt cookies the Haitians are eating is a traditional remedy used by pregnant women. The clay they are using is full of calcium. because food has gotten so expensive they have had to resort to eating these cookies in place of more substantial food.
I eat clay for medicinal purposes. There is a spot on my property full of beautiful red clay. I mix small amounts of it with filtered water for drinking, dab a little when its dry and powdered on my tongue, and use it to treat wounds and other ailments.
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