No, that’s not a typo for “pasta.” We’re talking about kids eating paste–especially the kind of paste they use in grade school classrooms for assorted art projects.
My wife says she used to eat paste in school. I didn’t. In those days it was a white past that came in a squat black or blue jar and was scooped out with tongue depressors. Nowadays it has been replaced by Elmer’s School Paste, which is basically the same thing in a different package.
How bad is it, for a kid to eat school paste?
Believe it or not, it’s no problem! The ingredients of school paste are flour, sugar, water, and alum or lime juice to keep off the silverfish–almost the same ingredients as pasta. So yes, you can eat school paste and not get sick. My wife says she ate it because she liked the taste.
I am asked if it’s okay to eat mucilage. I have no idea! Why would you want to eat mucilage? Or crayons? I knew a kid in junior high who used to snack on Milk Bones. Reach into her pocketbook and pull one out, crunch, crunch.
When you’ve got people figure out, let us all know.
When I was a kid, we used to mix our own paste when we ran out of the stuff in the jar. Just flour and water did the trick, with a little sugar to bind the stuff so it wouldn’t flake off when it dried. I remember that when we first started doing this it took a while before we got the consistency right.
Today in school they use glue pens the size of a white board marker. They work quite well and kids aren’t tempted to eat them.