Meet the lady whose pregnancy cravings ended up with her eating a CHAIR

Meet Vicky Cullen who eats the foam filling from the cushions of her armchair, dipping pieces of it in tea or covering them in chocolate spread.

Many women will admit to a strange and complex relationship with food. We overeat, we yo-yo diet, we calorie count and we binge on chocolate.

Vicky Cullen has her own unusual rituals when it comes to snacking. Where most of us nibble on biscuits in front of the telly, the 28-year-old tucks in to soft furnishings.

In particular, she eats the foam filling from the cushions of her armchair, dipping pieces of it in tea or covering them in chocolate spread or jam before popping them in her mouth.

“I’ve only just started revealing the extent of my cravings to friends and family because I’ve made a commitment to help make people more aware of the problem,” says Vicky, a beautician.

“I have eaten most of my big armchair – in the mornings I like to tear off a piece of the foam filling and dip it in orange juice.”

She also has cravings for washing-up sponges, and says she has eaten her way through 2,000 of them, both natural and manufactured, in the last five years.

Vicky’s cravings began in May 2011 when she was pregnant. She has since been ­diagnosed with pica, a medical disorder characterised by an appetite for substances including metal, clay, coal, sand, dirt, chalk, pens, paper, batteries, spoons, brushes, soap and ­cigarette ash.

Sometimes linked to ­obsessive compulsive disorder, it can be triggered by pregnancy or certain infections.

“It started with me when I was pregnant with my daughter Olivia, who’s five now,” says Vicky. “I know lots of women have strange cravings in pregnancy – my friends have told me they craved pickles and honey, tuna and ice-cream.”

 Vicky, who lives on her own with Olivia in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, was watching television one evening when she picked a hole in the sofa and found herself chewing on a piece of foam she’d pulled from the cushion.

“It seemed to satisfy a craving I’d had all day. I felt the same urge the following day, so I pulled off another piece about the size of a 20p coin,” she says.

“I was drinking some juice at the time so I dipped the foam, chewed it, swallowed and felt such a wave of contentment.”

Some days later she took a bite of a washing-up sponge and decided to Google her strange behaviour. That’s how she came across pica and ­stories of women who ate ­pebbles or stones or chalk.

“I felt relieved that what I was feeling had a name and was a recognised condition,” she says.

At that stage the foam passed through Vicky quite normally and caused her no discomfort.

She started buying extra washing-up sponges and experimented with using toppings on the chair foam – Nutella, jam, honey and peanut butter, then soy sauce, chilli sauce and even leftover gravy from the roast.

“It tasted delicious and made me feel so relaxed,” she says.

Vicky assumed the cravings would disappear after she had her daughter in September 2011. They didn’t – so she started stocking up on the snack she couldn’t do without.