Spicing up your life with extreme eating can have dire consequences.
Your Back Page scribbler has sometimes wondered if it might not be useful to have a “stupidity” scale, modelled along the lines of the pain scale.
At zero would be “sensible”, followed by “just a little bit stupid at one”. We would then progress up to “moderately stupid” at five, “very, very stupid at eight” and topping out at 10 with “teenage boy”.
Too harsh? Perhaps. But when we encounter incidents such as the recent case of 14 Japanese high school students being hospitalised after eating potato crisps, we do have cause to ponder.
As reported by Japan’s Fuji TV, around 30 students at a Tokyo high school were sharing the crisps during a break time when some started complaining of nausea and acute pain around their mouths.
Fourteen of them were rushed to hospital, with all conscious but at least one feeling so ill they had to be transported on a wheelchair, Fuji TV said.
The crisps in question are called “R 18+ Curry Chips” and, according to the manufacturer’s website, under-18s are “banned” from eating the crisps, which are “so spicy that they might cause you pain”.
The crisps are made using an extremely potent chilli called “ghost pepper” and the makers advise that folks with high blood pressure and weak stomachs should avoid consuming the product.
The company website also advises those who are “timid and have no guts” should also not try the crisps – which seems a tad irresponsible, given how such a challenge would likely be interpreted by the aforementioned teenage boy psychology.
But not as irresponsible as the promoters of the “One Chip Challenge” in the US.
This product is a single tortilla chip dusted with a spice made from two of the world’s hottest peppers, the Carolina Reaper and the Naga Viper.
The chip, which comes in a coffin-shaped box adorned with a red skull, is sold with a list of warnings cautioning those who are pregnant or have a medical condition against eating the contents.
This was not enough, however, to save a 14-year-old boy from Massachusetts in the US, who, in September last year, sadly died just hours after eating the chip.
The boy passed away after consuming the tortilla as part of a social media challenge that was widely promoted by the manufacturer.
He wasn’t the only casualty. A year earlier, three California high school students were taken to hospital and seven students in Minnesota were treated by paramedics after taking part in the same challenge.
The deceased boy’s parents are suing the manufacturer of the chips, which have now been removed from sale in the US.
The Carolina Reaper chilli has got prior form in this regard, with a 34-year-old man being hospitalised a few years ago after biting into one of the critters as part of a hot pepper eating competition.
And back in 2016, a 47-year-old man had a brush with death after he tore his oesophagus by retching and straining after eating pureed ghost pepper.
Which does go to show you don’t have to be a teenage boy to do incredibly stupid things – you just have to keep behaving like one.
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