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CHURKU MOHAN REDDY, MD; DORIS WRIGHT, MD; E. PERRY CRUMP, MD

Am J Dis Child. 1977;131(8):926-927.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

Ferguson and Keaton¹ reported that 39% of 361 pregnant women in rural Mississippi ate a varying amount of laundry starch. Merkatz² described parotid enlargements in a 36-year-old black housewife from the ingestion of a full box of starch daily over the period of a year. Gastric obstruction and subsequent partial obstruction of a small bowel was described as due to the excessive ingestion of laundry starch.³ Severe hypochromic anemia has been observed in black women whose diets have consisted chiefly of corn starch as used for laundering clothes,⁴ and there is one report of anemia in a 16-month-old black boy.⁵

Starch-eating appears to be confined almost to black women (particularly during pregnancy). This particular dietary aberration is more common among blacks of the South.

Report of a Case.—A 13-year-old black girl was brought to the Matthew Walker Health Center (of Meharry Medical College) because . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

Author Affiliations
Department of Pediatrics Meharry Medical College Nashville, TN 37208

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