We all do it.
We all claim we don’t do it.
What I want to know is what “it” actually is.
I learned early on that stuff from the nose tastes nice, stuff from the ear tastes foul.
I’m a heavy smoker, but I cannot discern any change in taste in this substance since I was a kid.
I consider it a guilty pleasure.
So what is this hardened crumbly stuff with a tangy texture?
(accepting the cold induced goo, which is much less tangy)
I have another friend like this that is a public picker, and then assumed everyone else was! its not true! Get a tissue, we don’t all do it. Really!
and eating it!!!..eww
It’s mucus and dust and bacteria.
Mucus is water and some glycosylated peptides (what’s that? it means some sugar molecules glom together with some amino acids) which carry immune cells. This mucus partially solidifies around dust or other particles from the air. It’s purpose is to be picked out, blown out or fall out and be discarded so that those particles carrying bacteria don’t infect you with whatever illness they may cause - colds being the most common.
The “danger” of eating your boogers is that you’re also consuming the very bacteria that your body is trying to protect you from. They may make you sick, although frankly it’s not too likely, as the acids in your stomach are strong enough to kill most common bacteria.
Thank you for that, most informative.
As a precocious child with a better grasp of the language than was probably healthy at that tender age, I initially assumed “it” was the most logical antecedent: “your nose.” I wondered why people didn’t just say “picking and eating your nose,” much as one might pick and eat apples or strawberries.
It occurred to me that few to none of my playmates, inveterate nosepickers all, were missing any facial features beyond the occasional baby tooth.
Then I learned the word booger, and the light dawned.
Picking? Sure. Eating? Absolutely not. Ew.
I judge you.
That’s what tissues are for! I have never eaten it except maybe by accident. Yuck.
Here’s the Straight Dope on colds & mucus.
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a971017.html
And no, we don’t all do it.
You guys are seriously missing out on this.
There is nothing wrong with it, aside germs … et al.
It is by no means yucky, logic dictates if it was yucky your olfactory nerve endings would be all at sea permanantly.
I do pick and eat furtively, as is the way of the world.
Your experience is not universal.
In Stephen King’s “The Dark Tower”, he shows us a race of non-human folk living side by side with humans, and working with them. One of the benefits they get from living with humans is getting to collect used kleenex so they may enjoy human nasal mucus, which they consider a treat better than any candy.
And then he comes back and tries to convince us! I am impressed. 
But still not gonna do it.
Hurk.
Note to self: add one more question to ‘vital things to know about someone before choosing life partner’.
And eeewwwww. No, we don’t ‘all’ do it.
Hell no. And I would go so far as to say the vast majority of us don’t. I’d like to be able to say it’s just the OP who does this, but where there’s one…
Well I’m pretty sure some little kids do it. Really little ones. Like 4- or 5-year-olds.
Kids dont’ count. They’re like human larvae; disgusting is what they do. 
Am I seeing more than a little denial in this thread.
“Never touched me nose ever Guv, honest!”
I suppose eating scabs is also on your “never did nuffink!” list too :rolleyes:
I suppose asking whether or not you consume those little pieces of ceratin nose hairs that get plucked out once in a while is also a non-starter.
Which begs the question, how bunged up are you on a day to day basis until it requires the use of a Kleenex.
How much is expunged in one go, do you catch solid blocks in the tissue?
If you will protest your innocence so loudly, I’m all ears.
Hoo boy. Nothing I love better than someone who thinks he’s right and the rest of the world is lying. :rolleyes:
You see, some of us don’t like eating bacteria or other bodily wastes. We prefer, actual, you know, food.
But there was a bf one of my friends had that spent one evening at my house picking things off of and out of various orifices of his and then tossing them about my living room. I imagine you’d be great pals. I didn’t see much of them after that. And I vacuumed. Many, many times.
:x
[hijack] It does NOT “beg the question”, dammit.
http://begthequestion.info/
Sorry, just a pet peeve of mine. [/hijack]
And, on topic- just ew.
Oh, I’ll go in for a pick if necessary, in private. I’d wager most of us do that from time to time. But, eating it? No way. It gets flung away, flushed or flicked into the trash (and occasionally affixed 'neath a desk); but never eaten.
And no, I’ve never chewed on scab either–I can’t even say the idea ever occurred to me, actually.