The Wall Street Journal today has an article on a widening habit--chewing on crushed ice. A lot.


"Compulsive ice eating was observed at least as far back as the 1600s, according to "Pagophagia, or Compulsive Ice Consumption: a Historical Perspective," an academic article published in the journal Psychological Medicine in 1992. Lazarus Riverius, a French royal physician, described young women afflicted with an "evil" diet ingesting great quantities of snow and ice, among other things, according to the journal article.

The American Dental Association says that ice-chewing can damage teeth. "People have the right to do things that may hurt them," says Matt Messina, a dentist in Cleveland and spokesman for the association. "If something breaks, we'll fix it."

Today, obsessive ice chewing has been linked to iron deficiency, which afflicts about 2% of U.S. adult males and as many as 16% of young females between the ages of 16 and 19, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Treating the deficiency -- whose link to ice eating is unclear -- tends to end the compulsive chewing for such people.

But many ice chewers say they just do it because they like to. Sometimes that leads to conflict with friends and family.


Jean Collins, a 44-year-old substitute teacher in Riverton, Wyo., says she chews through 10 to 14 28-ounce cups of shaved ice a day. "It's the first thing I did when I came home for lunch," she said in a phone interview.

She says her husband and three children have grown irritated by the frequent high-pitched whir of her ice-shaving machine -- and have threatened to destroy it. They've never followed through, but she has worn out four or five of the machines."