Why Do Cheetos Make Me Sneeze?

Originally published on: 9/21/2006 6:30:27 PM

I've been eating Baked Cheetos (130 calories in a big handful) as a side to most of my "quick" meals: sandwiches and the like. That, in and of itself, would not be worthy of the bandwidth used to send this post.

What I am finding strange is that, for some reason, eating the dang things makes me sneeze. Which, of course, is the last thing one wants to do with a mouthful of Cheetos. At first I didn't think anything of it. Then, I thought it might be the cheese dust going up my nose or something, but a couple of servings of otherwise dust-encrusted snack foods have made it both clear that that's not it and that I'm not imagining it. Every single time I eat them, I end up sneezing.

What's that about?

Comments

J Wynia
commented on 9/22/2006 5:38pm - 1 ounce Cheetos, 4 sneezes

Naomi Most
commented on 9/28/2006 Two possibilities spring to mind:

* You could actually be allergic to one or more of the ingredients.

* Cheetos produce much finer-grained dust than other stack foods.

J Wynia
commented on 10/3/2006 Those definitely are the most logical explanations.

I suppose if I really cared to solve it, I should take the ingredients list and compare against other snacks that don't make me sneeze. That would isolate whether theory number 1 is correct.

For the second, while it would be gross, I would think that wetting the Cheetos prior to eating would settle any dust. If the sneezing happens still, that would disprove the dust being involved at all.

Alicia
commented on 12/15/2008 I just read about your problem. Theory number two, I heard its really good to put lime juice on cheetos. That way it would still tastes good.