Effects of a nutritional supplement on coprophagia: a study of three cases.
A simple canned nutrition drink stopped feces-eating in three adults with profound ID.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Three adults with profound intellectual disability ate their own feces every day.
Doctors gave them a special liquid diet called an elemental supplement instead of regular food.
They watched whether the feces-eating stopped while the people drank the supplement.
What they found
The feces-eating stopped for all three adults once they got the supplement.
When they went back to normal food, the behavior returned.
The supplement worked again when it was restarted.
How this fits with other research
Jones et al. (1977) also stopped a dangerous eating problem fast, but they used a quick electric shock instead of food.
Humphries et al. (2008) later showed that teaching group-home staff about nutrition helps adults with ID eat better meals.
Shirotani et al. (2026) took the gut idea further by putting healthy donor stool into kids with autism and saw wide behavior gains.
All four studies say the gut and brain talk to each other, yet each team fixed the link in a different way.
Why it matters
If a client eats feces, ask the doctor to check for gut pain or poor digestion. A short trial of an elemental formula is low-cost and may give you a calm, safer client in days. Pair the drink with your behavior plan and track data so you can show the team what works.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
The cases of three individuals with profound mental retardation and long histories of coprophagia (ingestion of feces) were studied to determine if fecal material could be providing a nutrient that was unavailable from a standard institutional diet. In each case the individual was provided with a daily oral supplement of an "elemental diet," which, at twice the dose administered, would provide all the nutrients necessary for sustenance. The frequency of coprophagia was decreased in all three cases when they received the supplemental nutrients as compared to when they were maintained on a balanced institutional diet alone.
Research in developmental disabilities, 1993 · doi:10.1016/0891-4222(93)90037-k