Recent research is suggesting that eating dirt may help make it easier for people to lose weight. The research remains in early stages, so it is not yet conclusively known that this option can be used as an obesity treatment, but some remain hopeful.

The study about eating dirt didn’t begin as obesity research. Instead, the University of South Australia were examining the way clay dirt materials were absorbing medicine. That said, while they conducted their study, they stumbled upon a completely unexpected discovery.

Findings About Eating Dirt

What they found was that the clay they were studying was able to “soak up” droplets of dietary fat within an individual’s digestive system. This, according to the study report, has the potential to work as a very helpful obesity treatment. The study was recently published in the Pharmaceutical Research journal.

According to Tahnee Dening, doctoral candidate and lead researcher, the clay materials they were examining not only absorbed the dietary fat, trapping it into the clay’s particle structure, but it also prevented the fats from being absorbed into the body. This made the fat pass right through the digestive system and out with the waste.

The clay’s behavior within the digestive tract “signaled we could be onto something significant — potentially a cure for obesity,” said Dening.

We’re Still Not Ready To Start Eating Dirt

Still, while this type of eating dirt does look promising, Dening cautions that this remains very preliminary research. Moreover, this material has yet to be tested on humans for this purpose. The team only tested the clay material on rats that were eating a high fat diet.

Moreover the results from this study wouldn’t be the same simply from eating dirt. The rats were fed a very specific type of purified clay. They were given the clay over a period of two weeks. The clay was found to work better for weight loss than a placebo and worked better than a weight loss drug she fed other groups of rats on similar diets.

While clay cleanses and clay diets have been around for quite a while, it is still not recommend that anyone uses those products or start eating dirt. The results remain unknown until further study is conducted. Study on humans will tell researchers how much clay is needed to produce results as well as what possible side effects or other unwanted issues can be expected from its use.