(DailyMail) – An elderly woman from Varanasi, India, has eaten sand for the last six decades and claims the unique diet has been key to her good health.
Kusma Vati, 78, is so addicted to eating sand and gravel that she spends hours in search of her staple diet and if she has no luck, she will even nibble on the walls of her own house.
Her bizarre taste for stone has stunned everyone in her area of the city yet the grandmother claims it is because of sand and gravel that she has never felt sick.
Kusma said: ‘I have been eating sand and gravel for around 63 years now, I love eating them and I don’t think they have any harmful effects.
‘I haven’t suffered any problems in my stomach and mouth and my teeth are absolutely fine- if anything it’s made them tougher. I can bite into the hardest stone without a problem.’
Kusma, who works as a farm labourer might be approaching her eighties, but has no plans on retiring anytime soon.
The grandmother claims she owes the fact that she has never seen a doctor down to her daily 2KG diet of granular construction material.
Kusma said: ‘I have never seen a doctor because there has just been no need, for as long as I can remember I’ve felt perfectly fine.
‘I started eating sand at the age of 15 and I had a bad stomach ache but that didn’t last long and now it feels like all this is very normal to me.
‘I feel as though the minerals in the sand give me the energy to work in the crop fields.’
Kusma’s grandchildren are now begging her to give up the peculiar habit but she cannot understand why.
