Now that’s what I call an expert opinion 
Your post gave me a mental image that was both disturbing and hilarious.
‘Do not Eat’ is put there for lawsuit avoidance.
This is the closest corporations come to morality, so it shouldn’t be surprising.
Bill Engvall commented on these packets with something along the lines of: "What kind of moron would think that was something to eat in the first place? Do you ever buy a camera and **expect **to get gum, too? “Let’s see…here’s the camera body, and…look, some Chiclets!”
Make the stuff a deadly poison, leave off the warning, and improve the gene pool. Think of it as evolution in action.
I’d imagine that you’d get a case of diarrhea from it, though. As it passes through the intestines, it’ll absorb water from the intestinal walls instead of the other way around, causing the effluvia to be more liquidy than it should be. Not a bad enough case to be lethal, I’m sure, but still probably unpleasant.
So that’s what the kids are calling it these days.
Duckster said:
According to that link, the silica itself is nontoxic, but it might be doped with toxic agents.
Bolding added.
Colophon said:
No, for that you need anhydrous ammonia.
Chronos said:
You think it would pull more moisture from the colon than it absorbs? I would think it would work in conjunction with the colon, and you’d get constipation.
Like I said, it doesn’t really absorb all that much water, sadly. I suppose it absorbs enough water to do it’s job in electronics and such, but put it in a glass of water and it just pops a bit and stays in little hard balls. It doesn’t even absorb enough water to turn into mush.
When I was in the service we used to get these packs of bread that came with a single slice in a packet with a silca gel pack in it to keep it fresh. A Mexican buddy of mine sent a bunch to his non-English speaking family and they wrote back that the bread was good but the flavor packets didn’t taste very good, heh.
Any other clever reuses, besides making a five year old girl giggly?
I save the things, I can’t even remember why I started now. Oh yeah, I was going to dry some flowers, which I never did.
Now I have an large, open, mason jar in the pantry that I toss them into, whenever I come across them.
Jar’s almost full, any suggestions?
Yes. Do not eat.
WhyNot said:
Okay, so it doesn’t absorb much (like vapor amounts okay, liquid amounts no). So how much does it pull out of the intestinal walls? How does it pull more than it absorbs? My understanding is that it pulls by absorbing. Am I wrong?
Irritation is listed as the possible side effect, not diarrhea or constipation. Irritation because it is grit. I suppose irritating the lining of the intestine with grit can make it not absorb as well. Seems a different thing than what was being suggested above, however.
Vet here. Dogs seem to find those little packets quite palatable, and in my experience, never suffer any ill effects.
Incidentally, I’ve always wondered why people find it so difficult to give their pets oral meds. It seems they instantly gobble up anything else the owners drop on the floor. I’ve had dogs chew through their owners’ handbags to eat strip of contraceptive pills, plastic included, or climb furniture to get to a pack of aspirin. Still, they’ll spit out a worming tablet hidden in a chunk of liver.
I think we should note too that some of these packets are not silica gel to absorb moisture, but are scavaging oxygen in pharmaceuticals or in food.
So all that’s been said about eating silica gel packs may not hold true for these oxygen scavaging packs.