Sounds very similar to my childhood. My parents told me I couldn't eat sand because worms would grow inside of me. Now I have trust issues and prefer local LLMs.

The funny thing is the CDC says the same thing as your parents did

Whipworm, hookworm, and Ascaris are the three types of soil-transmitted helminths (parasitic worms)... Soil-transmitted helminths are among the most common human parasites globally.

https://www.cdc.gov/sth/about/index.html

How was the sand, though?