We can pick every last pebble of mud out of the dried beans, and split every leek right down to its base, but we will never rid our diet of its essential dirt. It's in every mouthful, in every succulent strawberry, in the tea bags and the biscuits. A baker's dozen minerals from boron to zinc are essential to the growth of plants. Incinerate a plant and you will find them in the ash. Eat those plants and you eat the minerals too.
Tea is rich in fluorine, soybeans in phosphorous.
The very taste of food can reflect its mineral content. The celebrated Vidalia onion lacks eyewatering pungency because it is raised in low-sulfur soil. Wine connoisseurs insist they can taste the vineyard's limey clay every time they lift a glass of grand cru Chablis. All of us are dirt-eaters. We eat of the earth from cradle to grave.