If you're a long-time fan of The Infographics Show then you probably saw our previous video
Man Who Eats Everything From Human Flesh To Live Eels.
In that video we told you about an unfortunate soul named Tarrare who grew up in nineteenth
century France and suffered from a freakish medical condition that saw him have an unstoppable
appetite.
Always hungry, Tarrare ate anything that he could get his hands on, and eventually was
kicked out into the streets by his destitute parents whom he had literally eaten out of
house and home.
Eventually he got a job as a sideshow performer and ate everything on stage from live eels
to even kittens.
Well, we're back again with another weird eating story, and once more the star of today's
show comes to use from France.
Seriously, isn't France supposed to be famous for their snooty, high class palates?
Go to France and ask for ketchup and see how many people look down their long, French noses
at you in disgust at your peasant tastes.
Yet for a second time though our weird eater comes to us from France, which makes us wonder
about some of those French stereotypes.
Michel Lotito was born in Grenoble, France in 1950 and seemed for all intents and purposes,
another healthy, perfectly normal child.
As he grew up though, he started getting weird cravings- and we're not talking about salted
butter mixed with vanilla ice cream weird, which by the way is delicious, we're talking
about legit weird, like fresh dirt weird.
Or paper napkins.
Late in his teens those weird cravings grew even stronger, and eventually he was diagnosed
with pica- an eating disorder that affects millions of people, though rarely with the
severity that it affected Michel.
It turns out that pica is one of the most widely studied eating disorders, and the population
of a mental institution can have anywhere from 4% to 26% of its patients suffering from
this malady on top of other possible mental disorders.
Clearly it's very widespread, yet we don't regularly hear stories about people eating
things like metal.
That's because most pica sufferers tend to limit themselves to discrete items such as
small pieces of plastic, hair, cloth, even small articles of clothing.
Patients can actually pull out strands of their own hair and eat it, and one woman who
complained of intestinal pains for months was discovered to have a fourteen pound hairball
in her stomach!
The condition comes with many potential health hazards, as is to be expected.
One of the biggest though is a lack of nutritional intake, as the individual feels 'full' from
eating non-nutritional items.
This can lead to severe weight loss and threat of catching other illnesses as the body is
too weak to fight off infection.
Infections can also come from within as individuals eat contaminated items, and the ingestion
of some items such as metal can lacerate the insides and pose a very serious threat.
In 2008 a British woman was discovered with a whopping 78 pieces of cutlery in her stomach,
and she had somehow managed to avoid cutting herself or puncturing her esophagus or stomach
while eating sharp forks- though she did say that she purposefully avoided knives.
Treatment for pica requires ongoing therapy, and there is no surefire solution to this
eating disorder.
It's likely that a sufferer will continue to consume innutritious items their whole
life, and instead treatment is all about managing what you eat and how much of it you consume.
For Michael Lotito though, treatment was never an option, and instead he chose to embrace
his very unusual eating disorder.
At age sixteen, Michael got into the sideshow business, realizing that he could turn his
talent for eating the strange and dangerous into personal profit.
He began by eating small items such as cutlery and other small pieces of metal and plastic,
but soon he was moving on to bigger objects.
Between 1959 and 1997, Michael ate an estimated nine tons of metal, which is about nine tons
more than the average human being.
The items he ate included a total of 18 bicycles, 15 shopping carts, 7 tv sets, 6 full-size
chandeliers, 2 beds, 1 pair of skis, a coffin, four hundred meters of steel chain, and the
piece de-la-resistance, an entire Cessna airplane- a Cessna 150 to be exact.
He didn't exactly just start munching on the airplane though, and it took him several years
to complete the feat, eating up to two pounds (1kg) a day of metal.
The plane was broken down into small pieces so that he could successfully swallow them,
as his prodigious appetite was not backed up with adamantium teeth.
If you think he skimped out on the interior parts of the plane, guess again, because he
ate not just the metal but the rubber from the seats, the glass in the windows and cockpit
displays, and all the various wiring.
Incredibly, Michael- known as Monsieur Mangetout, which means Mister Eats All- never once hurt
himself eating all this metal and other weird items, nor did he suffer ill effects from
toxic materials.
Doctors credit this to an unusually thick stomach and intestinal lining, which protected
him from the sharpened metal bits and any toxic residues on them.
To wash down all that junk, he used a large amount of water, regular tap water or sometimes
mineral water.
Michael would die on June 25th, 2007 at the age of 57, although not from anything that
he ate.
He passed away from completely natural causes, though some believe that the special diet
he had enjoyed his whole life nonetheless had something to do with his early passing.
For us, the biggest mystery here is what it must have felt like on the way out, because
the thought of all that sharp, jagged glass and metal going out the exit route scares
us to death.
Other weird eaters have included the likes of Todd Robbins, who also performs at carnivals
and sideshows.
He is best known for doing things such as swallowing swords, although he doesn't eat
them, and hammering a nail into his nostrils.
He also has an affinity for eating glass, though he doesn't suffer from pica and simply
does it for the wow value.
He generally eats light bulbs, and has eaten over 5,000 light bulbs throughout his career.
During his routine he'll screw in a light bulb to a lamp to show the audience it is
real, and then unscrews it, removes the metal off the bottom, and then bites into the bulb
as if he was eating an apple.
Robbins' routine certainly comes with risk, and he's cracked his teeth several times from
chowing down on glass.
He also admits that he has no idea if eating a light bulb will hurt him or not, remarking
that once he's eaten it he has no idea what it might do on its way through his body.
To keep his insides healthy, he maintains a strict diet that includes drinking lots
of herbal drinks and eating lots of fiber.
Teresa Widener is no sideshow performer, and instead prefers to keep her weird eating a
discreet affair.
Unlike most pica sufferers though, Teresa doesn't like eating many different types of
weird objects- just one: rocks.
She says that knowing she has a hoard of edible rocks in her kitchen gives her comfort, and
she chows down on them as she feels she needs to.
Clearly Teresa's condition is linked to some underlying psychological issues, but so far
her self-treatment doesn't seem to have caused any permanent harm.
Teresa explains that she enjoys going out to look for new rocks to eat, and even likes
to suck the mud off them before pocketing new acquisitions for her dining collection.
If a rock is too big she smashes it to pieces with a special hammer before chowing down,
and she'll even chew on them with the teeth on the left side of her mouth, which definitely
can't be very good for those teeth.
Teresa says that she really likes the earthy flavor of rocks though, and they seem to bring
her great comfort.
We guess that people have certainly done weirder things for comfort, but Teresa says that she
does get stomach aches and rarely goes to the toilet.
Lastly we have the story of the subject of an episode of TLC's reality show, My Strange
Addictions.
Known as Casie, this young woman developed her eating disorder when her husband passed
away and she ended up widowed at the age of twenty six.
Grieving for her husband, Casey developed a deep depression, and to cope she would carry
her husband's ashes with her everywhere she went.
She got into the habit of even cooking meals for him, which she herself would not eat,
and she would go to bed with the ashes next to her.
You probably already know exactly where this is going, don't you?
Well, one day as she was carrying the vase with her late husband's ashes in it, some
of them accidentally spilled out and she got them on her fingers.
Not wanting to simply wash them off, she decided to lick them off her fingers.
After that, she could no longer stop herself from sampling the ashes from time to time,
sneaking in tastes throughout her day.
It might be easy to make fun of or be disgusted by people such as Casey, but clearly she has
suffered a deep psychological trauma at a very early age.
Expecting to be wed for the rest of her life, Casey's marriage ended just a few short years
after it began when her husband Shawn died from a severe asthma attack.
Tragedy can have a funny effect on someone's mind, and though the act may be appalling
to the rest of us, eating Shawn's ashes was likely a way for her wounded mind to heal
from the pain of such a great loss.
Do you know anyone that suffers from pica?
Do you have any weird cravings?
Let us know in the comments!
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