Yuck! Book Details Body Functions Lime Green Cover ‘Grossology’ Even Includes Fake Vomit

Why do people get smelly feet?

What’s that gunk that collects in your eyes while you sleep?

Why is vomit green?

Answers to those questions and just about everything equally disgusting are in a new children’s book appropriately called “Grossology.”

Author Sylvia Branzei coined the title, which she defines as “the science of really gross things.”

Branzei, a science teacher in rural Mendocino County, Calif., says the idea for the book came to her last year while she was cutting her toenails.

“I said, ‘Ooh, what’s this icky stuff under my toenails?’ When I thought about it, it hit me that there’s a lot of gross things about our body that we want to know about.”

“Grossology,” published by Addison-Wesley, may be the grossest book ever written, though its subjects are familiar to anyone who sneezes, gets sick or sleeps, to name just a few bodily functions covered.

Among its observations:

Smelly feet are created by shoes and socks. Sneakers are the perfect host for bacteria and fungus, which thrive in warm, moist places.

Eye gunk comes from tears formed during sleep. The liquid evaporates into crusty masses that mix with sweat and oil from the caruncle, that bump of flesh in the lower eyelid.

Vomit contains not only undigested food but also hydrochloric acid diluted by mucous and food. Bile from the small intestine often turns it green.

Some of the facts go beyond gross:

“In some Eskimo tribes, it is customary for mothers to suck the snot from their baby’s noses and spit it upon the ground.”

Yuck!

The answers aren’t pretty, and neither is the book. The lime green cover shows a cartoon of a baby throwing up; attached is a piece of plastic vomit.

It also comes with a plastic magnifying glass so children can analyze their own bodily discharges to answer some questions for themselves.

“Usually once you find out the answers, you’re less grossed out,” Branzei says.

“Our regular bodily functions are considered disgusting, but when you find out about them, they’re not as disgusting as you thought they were.”