I’m surprised no one has mentioned Quarry Cereal. “It’s Better Because It’s Mined.”
Of course, this is the group that generally failed to mention John Belushi in its all-time SNL cast, so maybe I shouldn’t be surprised that no one remembers the bit.
And let’s hope you don’t have any fillings in your teeth when you start eating aluminum foil - I cringe just thinking about that feeling.
I’m sure people eat a lot of inorganic things, mostly unintentially. Salt has already been mentioned. I might add potassium chloride, which is used as a “salt substitute”. I remember reading in Natural History magazine about folks who used to add marble dust (!) to flour to make it whiter. I understand that other inorganic substances are deliberately added to foods for non-nefarious purposes as well.
Some inorganic substances are poisonous, of course, and they’re generally bad-tasting, which is presumably a survival trair born of natural selection. One substance, however, tastes sweet – I’m told. Lead Acetate used to be called “Sugar of Lead”. Nasty stuff.
Hey yeah - doesn’t/didin’t at least one brand of cereal add small iron filings (which you could supposedly pick out and see with a white magnet) to it’s product to bring it up to the recomended amount of dietary iron? I saw it somewhere… I think it was here.