If your kiddo is the world’s best at eating boogers, you’ll be happy to know it’s probably because that’s what nature wants them to do.
Warning! This might very well be the grossest post I’ve ever written. Never did I imagine sitting down at my keyboard to write about eating boogers. I’m already gagging! Let’s just hope I can get through this.
Why Do Kids Eat Boogers?
For as long as there have been children with noses, there have been children who eat boogers.
I remember when I was a kid, there was a girl who picked her nose and then put her finger in her mouth. I couldn’t understand it. Kids are nutty.
Children eat boogers for the same reason they stuff peas up their noses. It’s something to do. I promise you if your child had a nose full of vegetables, they would definitely be getting all their vitamins every day.
(I think I just invented a new child’s eating utensil that will revolutionize the “picky eating” industry!)
Nature may be the reason kids pick their noses. Apparently, snot tastes sweet. Nature made it so because humans love sweet things.
Because there are all sorts of environmental bacteria in our noses, eating boogers can teach our immune system what’s around us so that it can do a better job of helping us fight illnesses.
Science Says Eating Boogers Is Healthy
I have to ask myself why we have scientists studying the practice of eating boogers. Are we golden on everything else? No bigger scientific problems that need to be solved? Okay then.
“Medically it makes great sense and is a perfectly natural thing to do,” says Professor Friedrich Bischinger, University of Saskatchewan, Canada. “In terms of the immune system, the nose is a filter in which a lot of bacteria are collected. And when this mixture arrives in the intestines it works just like a medicine.”
Apparently, we have become so much cleaner than our ancestors, we have weakened our immunity to bad stuff.
More Snotty Science
1. Humans produce about 1.5 quarts of mucus a day.
2. You don’t make more when you’re sick, but it looks as though you do. Mucus gets diluted by a watery substance called serous fluid. When your nose is runny, an inflammatory response increases the amount of this fluid.
3. We swallow most of it. A lot of the swallowing happens at night.
4. Mucus is like flypaper. Anything that arrives via your nose will get stuck on the mucus. You’ll either swallow it or sneeze it out so it doesn’t get to your lungs.
5. Obsessive nose-picking is called Rhinotillexomania.
Do your little boogers pick their noses?
How do you handle it? Do you chastise them, or pay them no attention?
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5 comments on “Is Eating Boogers Helping or Hurting Your Child?”
Sorry but I think it’s grossÂ
Oh, thank goodness.  I’ve always worried that I’ll contract a rare disease that’s caused by eating boogers and my secret will be out.  I’m 60 and in perfect health.  .  However, I live alone. Â
I don’t pay much attention but ask him to stop in public if I see him doing it.
When I was in high school There was two of my teachers that did this daily. The whole class would be watching while they would do this. The teacher would assign work and then sit at there desk and proceed to pick there nose and put it in there mouth. This really did happen.
My 4 yo son is obsessed with picking his nose and sticking his finger in his mouth. He tells me it’s yummy and salty. I used to tell him how nasty and gross it was but the more attention he got from it the funnier he thought it was so the more he would do it. Now, I try to act like I don’t notice him doing it and he doesn’t do it as often but he still likes to do it. I just let him be a kid and a boy at that because I figured he will grow out of it and eventually it will fade away, I hope!Â