To ask if is map munching common and do any of you eat non food stuff (I'm not talking pombears)

[BuntCadger]

At a tourist attraction today feeling decidedly peckish as on 5-2 thing and fast day... Anyhow, I hear munching so I look and there is this slim lady in 40's wandering around the butterfly house with a clearly munched map in hand... I really wanted to ask her if it tasted good and if there were specific types of paper product she preferred.

I eat paper sometimes! I prefer brown paper.

Is it just brown paper Jux?

I think I might have tried grass, paper and dog biscuits when I was about 8. I really wanted to eat the blackboard chalk when I was pregnant and teaching (but refrained; even with my mushed pregnancy brain I knew it would be beyond weird).

But I can't recall ever munching on non foodstuffs since childhood! Maybe an animal had eaten it?

It's a condition called pica, and it's relatively rare. Sometimes pregnant women get it, it's more common in children and women. It can be dangerous or have other side-effects if too much is consumed though.

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The paper one is known as xylophagia BTW.

Would it not depend on what map it is? For example, I can imagine a map of the Sahara desert being rather dry, it will probably need a sauce to make it palatable. Whereas a map of, say, Ireland might be lush and juicy. And maybe a map of Greenland would be nice and refreshing when it's really hot? A map of Turkey might be good if you want a taste of Christmas dinner. (Unless you are vegetarian.) Putting a map of Alaska in the oven should provide a nice dessert.

And how about a map of Chile if you like spicy food (and are not a pedant)?

I used to eat rubbers (erasers), paper, and cardboard, but not as an adult!! Maybe into my teens all the same... I preferred the softer rubbers, not the plasticy ones, and recycled paper or thin cardboard (any colour).

I would think it is quite unusual in an adult!

I eat cake cases!

I had major respect for the girl that ripped up and ate a punishment exercise in front of a teacher once.

Oh I also used to nibble sponges!

Bonios are not as nice as they look, by the way. They have an oily meat taste that I guess is appealing to dogs but sticks in your mouth.

I am quite partial to chewing wet facecloths or gnawing something cotton like a muslin, but I bite down till my teeth ache. I do grind my teeth so perhaps it's related to that.

Cake cases with cake crumbs in, yes, but just cake cases out of the packet, no!

I thought this was going to be a euphemism for something interesting like draagon butter or something

Paper as a fairly big child. My nails even now very ocationally.

You know that little ring of plastic that gets left around the neck under the cap when you twist open a new bottle of water.

I chew them.

I have no idea why and I'm sure it's not good for me. I don't even know I'm doing it until DH or DS starts jumping up and down about spitting it out. They think it is revolting. Which it probably is.

Nobody leaves wood pencils or cheap plastic pens laying around the house either. Not unless they want to come back and find the pencil looks like it got attacked all over by a beaver and the pen is less encased in plastic and more surrounded by splinters and shards of its former cover.

But I don't actually eat any of the above. Well not on purpose anyway.

BuntCadger, it is brown paper for preference. I'm not enormously prejudiced as I will eat white paper if no brown is available. I don't do it so much as an adult, but for some reason every so often I just fancy a bit of paper

Oh, dd and I both eat rose petals. Quite often, but then they're nice.

I used to eat paper when I was a kid of around 7 or 8: tore it out of the margin of (my) books in long strips. The very pulpy sort was tastiest!

Jux, that's cheating - rose petals are legitimate food!

I like the idea of eating specially selected maps. You could have a map of Turkey for Christmas dinner. You might need second helpings if you'd eaten a map of Hungary.

Sagely, I ate rubbers at school, too! They have a really nice texture. Not the silicon ones, though, they taste of Play-Doh. Why the hell do I know what Play-Doh tastes like?

I had terrible pica as a child and teen. It lasted into my twenties. Pens, paper, sponges, plastic, remote control buttons. As a child weather stripping, the plastic from a clothes horse, a pumice stone. The paper from old paperback books was my favourite.

My mum caught me picking and eating lint from the rellies socks one holiday party.

I eat toilet paper. It's a craving i can't control. I probably eat half a roll a day.

I don't like some very cheap types, or the scented stuff, but otherwise I'm not fussy. I reel off about 10 sheets and shove it in all at once. I need some every time I eat normal food.

I'm frequently to be heard telling my children to get mummy some toilet roll. They don't bat an eyelid anymore.

Aah Garlic playdoh is practically a normal foodstuff!
Quite nice, but salty :)