World’s freakiest eater?

This man scoffs a plate of gravel and sand every day and says he has never been sick. Hans Raj is addicted to the bizarre snacks and says he has been eaten them for over 25 years.

The 45-year-old’s odd habit has gained him the nickname ‘sand man’ in his village and he even travels around to collect different sands, gravels and fragments of bricks to try.

Mr Raj, who claims he has never suffered any health complications from his strange diet, said: “I have been eating bricks and rocks for around 25 years now. “I started at a young age. Now it feels like all this is very normal to me. In my opinion, minerals in sand give me energy as do bits of masonry. I have suffered no problems in stomach and mouth. My teeth are absolutely fine. I can bite into the hardest stone without a problem.”

Doctors in Uttar Pradesh, India, where he lives have suggested his cravings could be due to Pica, an eating disorder which sees people develop appetites for normally non-edible objects. Raj’s addiction has even led him into a career that suits his taste — he’s a mason.

Who’s afraid of cakes?

Rachel Lee from Featherstone, West Yorkshire, has a phobia of cakes after a traumatic childhood experience in which she fell sick after eating a bit of sponge cake when she was just nine months old and has been scared of cakes ever since.

Her phobia is so bad that she can’t walk down the cake aisle in the shop where she works and has a panic attack if presented with one.

“I can’t be in the same room as one,” she said. “If someone walks past me with a piece of cake and they come close I start crying and shaking. I literally freeze on the spot if I can’t get away. I have known myself to jump over chairs to get away. The smell of a cake cooking is enough to make me violently sick and I can’t go up to a counter in a cafe or shop to order food if there are cakes.

Rachel remembers shaking and crying when cake was shared out at a friend’s birthday party when she was five years old.

Published in Dawn, Young World, March 5th, 2015