Scientists swallow Lego to see how long it takes to poo them out

Back in 2018, six health professionals were tasked by UK and Australian researchers to swallow and poop out the heads of Lego figures – and we imagine they were, quite literally, bricking it.

The resurfaced study is even titled ‘Everything is awesome: Don’t forget the Lego’, so you know they’re taking this issue very, very seriously.

“Children frequently ingest coins (generally with minimal reported side effects); however, the ingestion of other items has been subject to less academic study. Parental concern regarding ingestion applies across a range of materials.

“In this study, we aimed to determine typical transit times for another commonly swallowed object: a Lego figurine head,” a description of the study aims reads.

In further evidence of the researchers having an absolutely wild time investigating the issue, they analysed their bowel movements prior to swallowing the Lego heads across three days using something they called the Stool Hardness and Transit score.

Yes, that can be shortened down to a four-lettered naughty word. We’ll leave you to figure that one out.

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When it came to actually swallowing and then defecating the Lego head, they used a metric known as the Found and Retrieved Time score – or FART.

The academics found that the toy part passed through the six adults in 1-3 “with no complications”, but one of the three male participants searched his poo for two weeks after swallowing the Lego head, and couldn’t find it.

The paper continues: “It is possible that childhood bowel transit time is fundamentally different from adult, but there is little evidence to support this, and if anything, it is likely that objects would pass faster in a more immature gut.

“This will be of use to anxious parents who may worry that transit times may be prolonged and potentially painful for their children.”

They did it, so we didn’t have to, so thanks, we suppose?

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