On the Alleged Stone-Eating Habits of Dwarves

Dwarves do not eat rocks. I had hoped never to write this sentence. The myth appears to derive from two genuine facts: Dwarven nutritional requirements include unusually high quantities of certain minerals, and several traditional foods incorporate mineral-rich salts, clays, and powdered compounds which Humans find unappetising when described inaccurately. From this foundation, tavern folklore has constructed a race which snacks casually upon gravel.

The human digestive system cannot extract nourishment from a brick merely because it contains iron, and neither can the Dwarven one. Their mineral metabolism is more efficient and their dietary requirements differ substantially from ours, but they remain organisms rather than smelting furnaces.

I once watched a young Human traveller ask a Dwarven innkeeper whether the bowl of decorative pebbles on the counter was complimentary. The innkeeper stared at him for some time, ate one, and said yes. The traveller ate one as well, and it was a pebble. The Dwarf later admitted he had nearly broken a tooth.

I include this incident not because it advances nutritional science, but because it demonstrates the lengths to which a man will occasionally go in defence of his dignity.