Science: Eating Boogers May Be Good For You

Important dates in science history:

  • September 28, 1928 – Alexander Fleming discovers penicillin
  • April 12, 1955 – Jonas Salk announces to the world that he has created a vaccine for polio
  • May 1, 2013 – Canadian professor Dr. Scott Napper proposes that eating boogers may be good for you

Take it away, Dr. Napper.

“We were talking about the different types of molecules that are present in mucus, and it’s well known that there’s a lot of sugar groups. And then we took it a little bit further and said maybe your mucus tastes sweet to tantalize you to eat it. Kids who sort of don’t know any better or know any better that picking their nose and eating it may actually be training their immune system to the different types of pathogens and agents that may be present within the air,” Dr. Napper said. [KLTV]

Dr. Napper went on to say that the research should be completed in a few weeks, so hopefully we’ll have an answer to this age-old question relatively soon. But, either way, I think concerned mother Melissa Stokes summed it all up best.

“I’m not going to argue with him, but I don’t want my kids eating boogers,” Stokes said.

I love that we live in a world where someone said that sentence on the news.

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