Everyone has a hideous memory of catching someone, believing themselves to be unobserved, eating their own snot.

It makes you gag just thinking about it.

Bogies are natural, but they're also not food.

Turns out, the snot eater may have been ahead of the curve on health trends though. They were probably doing kegels before you too.

Scientists from a group of universities, including Harvard and MIT, have said parents should not discourage the eating of bogies.

Mucus is a 'rich source of bacteria' and good for the teeth, they claim.

The study, published in the American Journal of Microbiology says snot can bolster the immune system, and help fight respiratory infections and stomach ulcers.

Natural

Professor Scott Napper, co-author of the study and biochemist at Saskatchewan University, Canada, explained that snot and bogies are good for challenging the immune system.

From an evolutionary perspective, we evolved under very dirty conditions and maybe this desire to keep our environment and our behaviours sterile isn’t actually working to our advantage.

A fellow contributor, lung specialist Professor Friedrich Bischinger, said that the bogies don't even need to be fresh.

Eating the dry remains of what you pull out is a great way of strengthening the body’s immune system. Medically it makes great sense and is a perfectly natural thing to do. In terms of the immune system, the nose is a filter in which a great deal of bacteria are collected, and when this mixture arrives in the intestines it works just like a medicine.

Bogie chewing gum

Having established the benefits of snots, the team plan to make a chewing gum and tooth paste with the same bacterial boost.

The products will use synthetic bogies to pass on the effects.

As to the flavouring, we can only guess.

HT: AU News

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