Pakkirappa Hunagundi enjoys what you might call a diet high in minerals – mostly bricks, gravel and rocks, not the usual meat and three veg!
Hunagundi has been addicted to eating bricks and other building materials for more than 20 years and thinks nothing of scoffing down three kilos of debris a day.
Luckily he?s not a fussy eater and picks up bits and pieces he finds lying around his village in Gadag, India. The oddball eater uses nothing more than a glass of water to help digest the building material.
“I have been eating bricks and rocks for around 20 years now. I love eating them. It has become a part of my life,? said the 30-year old. “I started at the age of 10. Now it feels like a necessity to me. I can skip meals, but not bricks or mud.
“I have suffered no side effects. My teeth are absolutely fine. I can bite into the hardest stone without a problem.”
It is believed that he has a disorder called ?pica? where a person gets the appetite for odd, non-nutritious substances, such as ice, clay, chalk, dirt or sand.
His mum has desperately tried to tempt him with normal food.
“My mother says don’t eat all this. She keeps insisting, but even if she gives me chicken fry, I don’t eat it. I don’t like that at all,? Hunagundi said.
However, some good fortune may come from his strange taste. As a poor man living in India who is looking after his mum since his father?s death four years ago, he wants to see if his addiction could make him money.
?I have to take care of my mother. We don’t have any income. So I want to make use of my talent,? he said.
Sources: Daily Mirror, Daily Star