This isn’t something many people even think twice about – what envelope glue ingredients are.
Which is a problem, because it can actually contain a few different allergens!
Envelope glue is handy – you just lick it and it sticks! But you might also get sick from it.
Ingredients
Some of the biggest ingredients that you may have to worry about in envelope glue are both gluten and corn. It can contain both.
So, if you’re planning on licking a lot of envelopes, don’t! Get a sponge or something else to wet the part for you instead.
How I Figured This Out
This seems like weird trivia to know, but I’ve been corned by envelopes (had a reaction to corn from licking envelopes).
This is a part of my story that I don’t talk about a lot, but definitely impacted me in years to come.
One of the worst days I’ve had I blame on envelopes. This story takes place during my senior year of high school when I was starting to send out graduation party invites. I put a bunch together, licked the envelope, and then went on with my day. For various reasons, I couldn’t sleep. I finally got up and randomly decided to look at the invitations. This is when realized I had the zip code wrong on all of them…
This caused me to take apart all of the invitations and ended up fixing them at like 3am. Naturally, I had to lick more envelopes to get them ready to send the next day.
The following day, I didn’t feel like myself, and couldn’t figure out why. I barely ate, and just felt out of it. It seemed like I couldn’t function fully. Like I was in a daze. Later I realized it was mostly because of the envelopes.
This wasn’t my normal reaction to corn (at the time)- I am used to bloating and more specific stomach pains. This was me not being able to sleep, having high anxiety, and a lack of hunger/not eating all day. It took me a little while to figure out it was corn.
The moral of the story: The envelope glue ingredients have corn and possibly gluten too!
Helpful tip: use a wet sponge, wet your finger, or ask someone else to lick the envelope closed.
I hope this helps if you’re trying to figure out what made you sick. Looking for other probable causes of a secret corn-tamination that you wouldn’t have expected? Check out this website talking about where’s the corn?