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It appears that a high schooling scholarly person in Davis , California , bake her grandfather ’s ashes into carbohydrate cookies and render them out at school on Oct. 4 . Yes , multitude ate them . And , yes , this is a real news story . It wasreported in the Los Angeles Times . Apparently , some of the sugar - cookie - eaters know about the ash in the wampum cookie before they ate the carbohydrate cookie . Again , this is a actual news story .
posture with that for a minute .
It ’s probably a pretty good guess that most folks would agree that baking a dead soul ’s ash into sugar cooky and then feeding those crematorium sweet to teenagers is a unsound thing to do . [ 9 Disgusting Things That the FDA allow for in Your food for thought ]
But how tough is it really , at least from a health view ?
Live Science contact out to microbiologist Rolf Halden , director of the Center for Environmental Health Engineering at Arizona State University ’s Biodesign Institute andan expert in environmental contamination , for an answer to that question .
Halden said he did n’t want to comment on this case in particular — Davis police are investigating the incident — but shared his views on the practice of baking cremated human remains ( or " cremains " ) intosugar cookiesand feeding those sugar cookies to other human being .
It turns out that in some consideration , this might not be much of a problem — at least in terms of make the cooky - eaters sick . ( Whether it ’s an ethical problem is another issue . )
" Cremation essentially mineralize the human body and produces ashes that are rich incarbonand not much of a health concern , " Halden said .
So , the ash is n’t toxic , and it ’s not like it would carry any diseases .
" right cremation will absent all infective property of the corpse , thus allowing people to take the ashes home and store them in last space , " he added .
That does n’t mean there are no potential dangers .
" The one possible vexation worthy of consideration would be intemperate alloy , as can be found particularly in tooth fillings , " he said .
But even that probably would n’t dumbfound a problem , Halden add , because those materials are often removed from the ashes after cremation , and also because you ’d want to consume a lot of them for them topose a substantial peril .
So , the verdict on eating sugar biscuit with someone ’s grandpa ’s ash tree in them from a purely health and condom view ? It ’s probably no big deal .
But one of the teenager who eat one of the cookie told the Los Angeles Times that the ash tree see like " lilliputian hoar flecks " and had a texture of sand " crunching in between your tooth . "
So , you know , maybe avoid that .
in the beginning published onLive Science .
