Every time I go on TikTok I witness people doing things I've never seen before in my entire life. Today, it happened to be a girl eating packing peanuts.
"They taste like if you got a Cheetos Puff and took the seasoning off of it and then left the bag open for two days so they got stale," 21-year-old Payton Thompson told BuzzFeed.
Thompson is a theater major at Northwest Missouri State University. Every year they get packages of stage makeup kits that are filled with delectable packing peanuts.
"I learned they were edible from one of my college professors," she said. "Now whenever we get them I like to eat a couple of them just to mess with the freshmen that year."
Eating something that looks and feels like plastic foam is not a light matter to me, so I decided to fact-check Thompson's professor.
As we all know, Wikipedia isn't the most reliable source, but it was pretty much the only place I could find info on edible packing peanuts. Apparently there are certain brands that are made of nontoxic and biodegradable materials that are safe to eat.
Some further googling led me to a brand called Puffy Stuff that claims its packing peanuts — while "not particularly tasty" — are "edible and digest easily." Here's hoping they're the type that this dog is eating:
And this girl:
Thompson herself wouldn't advise eating "nontoxic" packing peanuts, since she eventually got sick from it.
"The TikTok took me a couple takes and then I had also walked up to some people and ate some so I ended up eating about 15–20 of them, which I guess was the max for myself," she said. "I also happened to throw up like an hour before I had to go onstage for a show I was in."
FYI: BuzzFeed does not recommend you eat packing peanuts. If your pet or kid accidentally ingests packing peanuts, please consult with your doctor to make sure everything is fine and dandy!
