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Though finding a hair in your food can kill your appetite, eating it probably won’t kill you. In fact, it likely won’t affect your health at all.
As
Popular Scienceexplains, hair mostly comprises keratin, a protein that poses no threat when eaten. And while it is technically possible that there’s
Staphylococcus aureusbacteria clinging to the hair, it’s probably not enough to cause any gastrointestinal distress. If the hair snuck into your food before it got cooked at a high temperature, chances of illness are even slimmer. “Ingesting a hair or two … will likely not be problematic and will just pass right through you,” Adam Friedman, a dermatology professor at the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences, told VICE.