I’m Not Sure Edible Slime Is Actually a Good Thing

Kids love slime, kids love Jell-O, kids love eating whatever they’ve just spent the last hour throwing on the floor, and now that JELL-O is producing “Edible Slime,” all three of those things have converged.

As a mother of two small children, half of me is like, “Great, that’s 100 percent less of a chance that they’re going to swallow Borax this morning,” but the other half considers what the slime looks like by the time they’re done playing with it, and thinks, on second thought, that they should not put that anywhere near their mouths.

I’m a germ-friendly person: I believe that most of the time, if the food drops on the ground I can pick it up and hand it back to the kid. I don’t wipe down every (any) surface with sanitizing wipes, and I’ve pretty much accepted that my younger daughter eats at least 10 percent of the sandbox every time we go to the park.

But by the time kids finish playing with slime (see also Silly Putty, anything with glue involved, and their own sticky paws), it is pretty gross. I don’t even know where this stuff comes from — are they pulling out their own hair to drop in there? Do the dust bunnies crawl out from under the couch and dive in for a nibble of tasty slime? Who knows, but I do know that the slime ends up looking like something that needs to be thrown away, not eaten.

Beyond the grossness of eating it, I see two issues with the edible slime (which comes in flavors Monster and Unicorn). The first is that if they get in the habit of eating it, I worry that they might try to eat non-edible slime at a friend’s house or at school, not realizing the difference (my kids are little, maybe this is less of a concern for older children). Second, I spend enough time trying to convince my small set not to play with their food, so I don’t think encouraging it is a grand idea. But hey, I grew up in the Jell-O Jigglers generation, and we all lived, so maybe playing with our food isn’t the worst thing we could do?

Buy Now: JELLO-Play Slime, Unicorn, $10