Chalk Lantan

Belarus – BY001A
Composition: Chalk
Colour: White
Shape: Shaped

Very soft and delicate, easily breakable and smells slightly of dust. It is delicious and melts in your mouth.

Chalk Lantan was obtained by the Museum of Edible Earth in 2016 from an online vendor based in Germany. The chalk was then shipped to the Netherlands.

Chalk Lantan is produced in Belarus, in the settlement of Orekhovsk. This chalk was used in many schools of the Soviet Union as writing material for blackboards. It is still available on the market as a writing material in Belarus, Russia, Moldova and some of the Baltic states.

At the same time it is sold by some online shops as an edible product. According to those sellers, Lantan is a natural source of calcium, which can be used to strengthen the bones. However, there are also warnings online saying that this is not a natural chalk for eating, but a stationery product. According to the online resources in addition to the source material, taken from the quarry, kaolin, starch and some paraffin are also added to the product.

It takes two weeks to produce the chalk. The chalk is made from a doughy wet mass and after moulding the chalk has to be dried. Then the mass is loaded into an extruder, a device very similar to a meat grinder. Endless soft sausages are squeezed out of its round holes, which are then cut by a guillotine. Workers on the conveyor manually put the crayons into pallets. Defective chalks immediately go for processing again, therefore the production is waste-free.

Sources:
● ‘А в Татарстане “Лантан”… едят’, 29/10/2015, Russia (Russian), accessed on 03/05/2022 www.chalk-mountains.ru/>
● Online shop Chalk Mountains based in Russia, accessed on 03/05/2022 www.chalk-mountains.ru
● Online shop Umuru based in Germany, accessed on 03/05/2022 www.umuru.com

Photo from Chistomel.ru