Everyone stress eats, right?
Usually it’s some vice like chocolate or tortilla chips that one craves when they're stressed out.
But for this woman, it’s sponges.
Emma Thompson, 23, craves kitchen sponges, and eats anywhere from two and twenty every day.
She suffers from Pica, a kind of eating disorder that drives sufferers to crave and eat items that aren’t technically food.
She developed this habit when she was three, first chewing bath sponges, then discovering that she liked kitchen sponges more.
But she can’t just eat kitchen sponges on their own, right? There’s no way that would be appetizing.
She already thought of that. She soaks her sponges in apple-flavored dish soap overnight before she eats them, and she removes the scouring pad.
What’s perhaps most surprising is how little it’s affected her health. The only effect she’s experienced from eating sponges and soap is getting tonsillitis from eating too much soap.
But this doesn’t mean you should go out and try it. Doctors say that it’s likely to cause vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pain, and nausea.
But she doesn’t seem to be bothered by other people’s judgement of her. She said:
“I enjoy the taste of it. I enjoy it more than food. Some people go out for a steak, I would rather go out for a sponge. It’s a guilty pleasure. Some people smoke—I eat sponges . . . I chew it and sometimes I swallow it. I like the smell and taste of the washing up liquid on the sponge. It tastes like apples, it’s quite foamy. My mouth gets full of foam.”
She has no plans to give it up.
