snail mucin

This is of course the slime which a snail secretes to smooth its path over rough terrain, but if you walk into a chemist’s shop and ask for snail mucin you will be shown a bottle of a beauty treatment from South Korea.  The story begins in Chile in the 1980s where workers on a snail farm noticed that their hands were noticeably smoother and softer than the hands of non-snail farm workers.  Skip to Korea where apparently snail mucin has been popular for decades.  Now the market is worldwide and predicted to grow enormously in the next few years.

Snail mucin is a complex mix of chemicals but one is hyaluronic acid, found in joints and the skin in humans and responsible for skin repair.  It is good for hydration and can reduce hyperpigmentation and remove fine lines.

The good news is that the snails are not harmed in the harvesting of mucin.  They are allowed to slip and slide across a fine mesh in the darkness, then taken home while the mucin is removed from the mesh.