Foam Peanuts Anyone?

Foam Peanuts Anyone?

By Debra Taylor

August 12, 2011

On my way out to exercise this morning I met Sister Riddle on the stairs with anxiety on her face. She informed me that some Asian and Philippine missionaries had eaten foam packing peanuts that were left in a box for trash. They thought they were rice. They were white! I couldn’t believe it! “Were they hungry?’ I asked. “I don’t know!” she answered. My mind began racing as I thought about bowel obstruction. We wondered what to do. Sister Riddle said that she didn’t want to tell the AMA (area medical advisor) because he wouldn’t believe it. I said, “I don’t blame you.”

My mind was still racing and now praying, when I remembered working with preschoolers at the UVU preschool. We regularly used different mediums in the sensory table as the children would experiment with objects and textures. One time we used some foam peanuts that had been donated and thought that we could use them in water with plastic boats. To our surprise when we added the foam peanuts to the water they began to disintegrate into the water. After remembering that experience I ran into the CR (bathroom) with the few remaining peanuts and put them in water. To my great relief they began to disintegrate into a slippery starchy substance. I called for Sister Riddle to come and see. I then ran to my office quickly to check the ingredients of foam packing material from the internet. There on Wikipedia, foam peanuts are made from polystyrene and bioplastics (thermoplastic starch) from sorghum and corn starch.

I then decided to look up edible packing material. To my surprise we have many to choose from; soy protein, chitosan (shellfish), protein-fatty acid-starch-based, water protein, corn protein, and corn starch.  I don’t suggest that we make them part of our MTC menu, the “Basic 4”, or the “Food Pyramid” because of the lack of nutritional value, but it is more than a great relief our missionaries didn’t die from foam peanuts.