Paqui, the maker of extremely spicy tortilla chips marketed as the “One Chip Challenge,” is voluntarily pulling the product from shelves after a woman said her teenage son died of complications from consuming a single chip.
The chips were sold individually, and their seasoning included two of the hottest peppers in the world: the Carolina Reaper and the Naga Viper.
Each chip was packaged in a coffin-shaped container with a skull on the front.
Lois Wolobah told NBC Boston that her 14-year-old son, Harris Wolobah, ate the chip Friday, then went to the school nurse with a stomachache. Wolobah said Harris — a sophomore at Doherty Memorial High School in Worcester, Massachusetts — passed out at home that afternoon. He was pronounced dead at the hospital later that day, she said.
Until sales of the product were suspended, Paqui’s marketing dared people to participate in the challenge by eating a chip, posting pictures of their tongues on social media after the chip turned it blue and then waiting as long as possible to relieve the burn with water or other food.
The challenge has existed in some form since 2016.
I think that tens of thousands of people have done it and this is the first fatality says that it was something unique about the victim, rather than the chip.
Please see @WHYAREWEALLCAPS’ repost of the NYT article below. This is the first fatality, but not the first hospitalization of a child.
Yeah lots of parents love to waste the ER’s time and staff with their kids petty complaints, doesn’t mean the product’s dangerous to any but a microscopic number of people.
In a 2020 study, researchers at the University of Mississippi Medical Center detailed the “serious complications” that can result from eating the Carolina Reaper pepper, noting that a 15-year-old boy had suffered an acute cerebellar stroke two days after eating one on a dare. The Carolina Reaper has been measured at more than two million Scoville heat units, the scale used to measure how hot peppers are. The Naga Viper has been measured at just under 1.4 million Scoville units. Jalapeño peppers are typically rated at between 2,000 and 8,000 units.
This is hotter than that. It’s not a safe product. I have no idea why you think it is.
Removed by mod
Just because it’s the consumer’s fault doesn’t mean a hot chip that can send you to the hospital should be on store shelves lol
I don’t think the mom has any right to sue, though
Why doesn’t the mom have any right to sue? That’s kind of how the American legal system works.
Because a parent can’t sue when their kid with peanut allergies eats a bag of candy that says WARNING: CONTAINS PEANUTS and dies. There’s lots of warning labels on the chip container
This is just my opinion, I’m not a lawyer
Should alcohol be illegal for everyone because it harms children? That’s the case you are basically making.
That’s the example you want to give in support of your argument that this chip should be within reach of kids? A highly-regulated product that can only be purchased by adults?
And where did I say it should be illegal? I said it doesn’t need to be on shelves and even implied they did nothing wrong legally (the mom shouldn’t be able to sue)
What exactly are you defending here?
Yes.
When you’re dealing with a child it’s never their fault. Kids do stupid shit.
Removed by mod
I think at the very least, yes.
Way more people have strokes after chiropractic neck adjustments and dental surgery. When are we banning those?
Are stores not allowed to decide what they want to sell?
How does that relate to my comment? We don’t have an official cause of death on this guy. We just have the mother claiming it was from the chip. The paper claiming the kid had a stroke 2 days after eating a hot chip seems very questionable.
We have lots of people who have gone to the ER after being in intense pain from eating something that causes intense pain. No evidence presented that they were actually in danger.
Chiropractors and dentists are well documented for causing strokes after neck adjustments and surgeries. There’s even a good explanation for why, in that they can both cause tears in the neck blood vessels and arteries resulting in blood clots that can very quickly get to the brain.
a 15-year-old boy had suffered an acute cerebellar stroke two days after eating one on a dare.
No actual danger?
deleted by creator
This is hotter than that. It’s not a safe product. I have no idea why you think it is.
I’m not saying it is or isn’t safe, but this seems completely arbitrary. Why are you so sure that over 2 million scoville units is unsafe? There are some pepper spray brands that are in the 5 million+ range.
Did you read the pasted article? That’s why. And I wouldn’t suggest anyone ingest pepper spray, so that’s a weird comparison.
deleted by creator
woah be careful you’re about to dismantle the whole anti vax argument if you keep talking like that
Removed by mod
You’re supposed to put a couple dabs of the last dab into a pot of chili. That’s when it adds the right amount of flavor and heat. Eating it straight is what gets you.
Removed by mod
Are you sure you aren’t talking about Da Bomb? The Last Dab isn’t that bad.
Removed by mod
You must be mistaking Last Dab for something else. It’s really hot but it also tastes great. It’s one of those sauces that I can’t eat much of because of the heat but I’m constantly coming back to because the flavor is excellent.
Yup. I’ve tried so many of the different high end hot sauces. I love them. I tried this back in I think 2020. On one hand, glad I did it. It’s a challenge. On the other hand, I don’t think I would do it again.
But the chip they use now is supposed to be even hotter. Like at some point it really does become a health concern. Especially for people who aren’t used to super hot foods. Even my brother, who can also keep up on the hot sauces, complained that it made his stomach hurt for a good hour.
Removed by mod
The Taco Bell stomach is more likely food poisoning than anything remotely spicy.
Removed by mod
Do you think Taco Bell is representative of actual Mexican food? Blaming Taco Bell isn’t racist, its blaming shit tier food
Removed by mod
Dude what the fuck are you smoking. You need to chill out 8 notches.
I do get hungry pretty fast after Chinese food, but I always felt it was because the food was so damn good I simply wanted more of it.
Wow. You are just full of terrible takes and mistakes in this thread…
I don’t understand how people see this as showing off, putting stuff in your mouth that you and your body don’t want to be there. Like, why not eat a piece of shit and some stink bugs? Oh right because it’s fucking stupid.
It’s the same reason people do things like skydiving. Just cause you’re not into it, doesn’t mean it’s stupid.
But doing it for internet points sure as fuck is
I can understand the thrill of skydiving, even though I’ve never done it and probably never will. And I can understand enjoying good hot food, because I do. But making something hot just for the sake of being hot, and daring people to eat it just to say they can seems pretty pointless.
Stupid me. That’s right because skydiving causes nothing but pain.
Removed by mod
Thank you because I definitely said they’re the same.
Habanero tastes pretty great, but the heat is far too much for me. Like most people, I have to have it dialed down to enjoy the flavor.
Someone let me try their “Dumbass Hot Sauce” and it was very spicy, with a gross bitter taste to it. It’s made for people to show off in front of others. It’s not an enjoyable taste.
This seems like the latter kind of food. It’s not spicy as a result of trying to make something that tastes great, it sounds like it was made to be spicy as a marketing gimmick. It sounds like that coffee with “death” in the name that I hear taste nasty. It has added caffeine. It’s meant to have the highest amount of caffeine as a gimmick, not to taste good.
Some of us genuinely like that level of heat. My go to is Dave’s Gourmet “insanity sauce” since it’s incredibly hot, but also has a nice flavor.
That last paragraph is why I don’t like Tobasco. It’s not flavorful. It’s just heat and vinegar. Better as an assault deterrent than as food. Dave’s has some good sauces, but the Insanity Sauce is not one of them, for the same reason.
Removed by mod
*Tabasco
Tabasco sauce tastes super sweet to me. Like pure sugar.
It’s not good.
I actually quite like the flavor of the last dab, but it’s not a sauce you can be generous with. Anything with extract in it I avoid.
Same. I think the Last Dab has great flavor. All the Hot Ones sauces are actually really delicious, imo.
I’ve not had one from them that I dislike, and they tend to use good ingredients. As for the last dab, I already really like the flavor of the Carolina reaper, and the Apollo is just great for that. They do a generally good job with balancing their heat/flavor for their sauces, too.
I’ve honestly thrown away whole bottles because I forgot to check for extracts. Tastes terrible. If I’m gonna be eating something super hot, it better taste at least decent. Or just no taste because the heat overrides it.
Anything using extract also feels much hotter than the scoville level would suggest, and it always goes straight to the back of my throat. It’s not even hot, it just hurts and tastes like shit. Extract is the worst, don’t put OC spray in my hot sauce!
My first guess was that he died of pneumonia from aspirating chip dust. The actual case sounds like something that seriously needs a warning. Young healthy people don’t think of stomach ache as potentially lethal and the package should make clear that it is dangerous.
Yes. Proper labeling, not illegalization ffs.
I just had some Last Dab in my Mac n Cheese last night. It’s fine, just very hot, but it tastes good. Sauces from that show that are actually just stupid hot are like, Da Bomb Beyond Insanity, Classic Pepper X Edition, and Taco Vibes Only. Those are made specifically to be too hot.
anyone born after 2008 can’t cook… all they know is mcdonald’s , charge they phone, play Roblox, eat hot chip & die
I enjoyed your downvoted meme reference.
I feel bad for laughing. It’s offical. We are both bad people.
deleted by creator
Removed by mod
that th joke
deleted by creator
The NYT has additional information that may add context.
Harris Wolobah is not the first child who has sought medical care after eating the chip. School officials in California and Texas told the “Today” show website last year that students had been taken to the hospital after eating one.
Also last year, about 30 public school students in Clovis, N.M., experienced health issues after eating the chip, KOB-TV of Albuquerque reported. As a preventive measure, the Huerfano School District in Colorado banned the chips, according to a post on its Facebook page.
In a 2020 study, researchers at the University of Mississippi Medical Center detailed the “serious complications” that can result from eating the Carolina Reaper pepper, noting that a 15-year-old boy had suffered an acute cerebellar stroke two days after eating one on a dare. The Carolina Reaper has been measured at more than two million Scoville heat units, the scale used to measure how hot peppers are. The Naga Viper has been measured at just under 1.4 million Scoville units. Jalapeño peppers are typically rated at between 2,000 and 8,000 units.
But that has not stopped the curious.
Colin Mansfield of Beaumont, Calif., and his nephew Cole Roe, 15, ate the chip together over FaceTime and Mr. Mansfield shared the video on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. Mr. Mansfield, who makes his own hot sauce, said that it was like a “really spicy curry” and that the heat began to wear off after about 10 minutes. (His nephew, he said, needed a drink after 30 seconds.)
But that’s when another side effect kicked in for both of them: a crippling stomachache.
“I was on the floor, in a fetal position,” Mr. Mansfield said, adding that he wouldn’t have eaten the chip had he known that it would feel as if “somebody put you on the ground and kicked you in the stomach.”
Devin McClain and Jade Dian, who live in Houston, said they had also experienced stomach pains after recording themselves eating the chip — and then chasing it with water, milk and ice cream — for their YouTube channel.
“It was instant pain,” Ms. Dian said. “The milk was not helping, the ice cream was not helping.”
Mr. McClain said that even after the intensity of the heat had faded in his mouth, he could still feel it in his body.
“You could feel it spread; that’s the worst part, honestly,” he said.
Clearly the stomachache response is not unheard of. In addition, stomach distress can be a symptom of anaphylaxis. I have to wonder if it’s people with very, very mild allergies to capsaicin and the amount and strength in these peppers are pushing it into extreme allergic reaction. One thing that gets me wondering is that nothing listed in the ingredients, to my admittedly limit knowledge, should turn your tongue blue. So how are they achieving that, what ingredient is not listed? When trying to find out through Googling it, I found even more cases of people getting hospitalized because of the chip, especially teenagers, in previous years.
In the chili-head community, these stomach aches are well known as “cap cramps” (capsaicin cramps) and it happens to just about everyone while building a tolerance to capsaicin. Over time and continued eating of mega hot stuff, these cap cramps get less severe and the amount of capsaicin ingested in order to trigger cap cramps increases as tolerance builds.
Competitive pepper eaters actually make themselves vomit after eating large amounts of super hots in order to avoid the cap cramps, they can last for double-digit hours to if enough is consumed.
These cap cramps send a lot of folks to the hospital if they don’t know any better, but they haven’t been life threatening for healthy adults. The data just isn’t there for that.
A lot of people will also over indulge on dairy thinking they are helping the burn in their mouth, but drink a half gallon of milk in one sitting and it upsets stomachs, too.
I’d be interested in knowing how the study at the University of Mississippi directly correlated the stroke to the hot pepper a full two days after ingesting, that seems like a stretch to me. What is it about the mechanism of capsaicin on receptors that would cause a stroke?
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7136587/
This is the study. There was no stroke for this person, but what they call reversible cerebrovascular vasoconstriction syndrome. He presented two days after the pepper, after football practice, for a headache that wouldn’t go away.
The study never says the pepper caused the issue, but it is hypothesized.
Further, if you dig into the links in the study of other examples of extreme reactions to hot peppers, you have
A) esophageal rupturing after a bout of violent retching a vomiting after eating a ghost pepper
B) acute myocardial infarction and coronary vasospasm by someone taking cayenne pepper pills for weight loss where the abstract is just postulating capsaicin was the cause, but end of the day dude was taking diet pills
C) some nothing burger abstract about someone having a thunderclap headache after eating a super hot
There isn’t even an adequate sample size to be statistically significant with regards to capsaicin being the root cause for any of these issues, not to mention none of these studies are actually confirming their abstract to any reasonable degree.
I’m not saying the chip didn’t lead to this young man losing his life, but there is no worthwhile scientific data pointing to that being a legitimate reason. This is an outlier case I’m interested in the outcome and I feel for the young man’s family, but my hypothesis is that we’ll find out any correlation to the one chip challenge will only be tangentially related.
So how are they achieving that, what ingredient is not listed?
Ingredients I see (at least on the search result from the official website, likely cached) say blue corn and blue 1.
The page itself with talk of the 2023 version doesn’t list anything about blue (and explicitly says in the FAQ that there’s no dye), so maybe they gave up on that.
I read elsewhere that the 2023 chip does in fact no longer include the blue coloring.
If I recall, the chip I ate was a virulent green. I expect blue die made a yellow chip green.
Vibrant?
Not a bright color, dark and foreboding.
People are calling this kid stupid. I disagree.
Nobody buying food in America would think that a single serving product would be able to kill you without any sort of prior health conditions. This is a completely fair assumption and one that is important.
Second, the one chip challenge has been in the public eye for a while. There are multiple examples of people eating them successfully in previous years. When things do go badly, it’s usually something along the lines of “I threw up everywhere”. That’s a far cry from dying and along the lines of risks teenagers have taken for decades.
Third, a ton of food items use the skull and crossbones motif. I’ve seen it on hot sauces that aren’t even that spicy. Nobody assumes that the skull and crossbones means risking death. This is, again, because everyone assumes that food is generally safe to eat.
In conclusion, don’t sell things in convenience stores that can kill an otherwise healthy person in short order. While this is especially true for children, it’s a good rule of thumb in general.
The chip has been safe to eat for millions of people for years.
Capsaicin consumed orally isn’t fatal. This kid probably has some other underlying health problems he was simply not aware of, but it’s not like it’s an inherently lethal product. If a kid with an unknown peanut allergy eats and dies from a Snickers, it’s not like Snickers are actually a lethal food.
It does say it’s intended for adults only, but that’s hardly ever stopped teenagers from doing anything ever. It’s probably good they pulled it temporarily, but the real answer here is probably simply “Don’t sell this to minors.”
there is also the possibility that the ship was contaminated with some at the factory. Maybe a cleaning chemical got in the chip
Third, a ton of food items use the skull and crossbones motif. I’ve seen it on hot sauces that aren’t even that spicy.
Even regular water can have morbid branding https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_Death
I thought this is the kind of thing the FDA is for. If it can kill a 14 year old then why was it allowed?
Meh.
The chips were sold individually, and their seasoning included two of the hottest peppers in the world: the Carolina Reaper and the Naga Viper.
Each chip was packaged in a coffin-shaped container with a skull on the front.
This is about the most wasteful product I’ve ever encountered. You wrap one chip in plastic to keep it fresh and then throw cardboard around it with tons of empty space and then ship those on trucks?! What the fuck.
I support killing this product on its environmental harm whether it’s implicated in the teen’s death or not.
One of my favorite bits from Futurama is when Fry is using some “make your own Oreo cookie” device that has individually wrapped cookies and individually wrapped cream, so he’d open each one, toss the plastic, smush them together just to take them apart like some people do with Oreos.
Hilarious and horrifying because you just know we have products like that today lol
Great reference. I remember that and it made me smile in horror.
On a ‘plastic per calories’ scale this is very wasteful indeed. But actually it is not just a chip, its more of an activity being sold. Other activities are much worse resource-wise. Some people go skydiving, others eat a chip at home.
Yeah, it’s not actually a food. Nobody eats these for the taste or calories. It’s purely for the experience of the challenge and the packaging is understandably part of that experience. It’s still wasteful, but it’s the kind of society we live in. Packaging works. If they could sell as well with less waste, I’m sure they would. The packaging is a calculated attempt at maximizing the experience, especially under the assumption that it’s going to spread by viral videos.
Don’t check out Japan
But hey, they have square watermelons!
Tbf I would assume there’s not much volume being sold, considering it’s definitely at most a serving being packaged. Afaik nobody is out there buying a handful of these to eat as a snack.
EDIT: based on the other comments, it seems like the average consumer buys at most one of these in their lifetime, haha.
Yeah, this sounds like a case where if they packaged it like other chips, it would just mean instead of throwing out a small amount of plastic per chip eaten, you’re throwing out a chip bag worth of plastic along with most of the other chips after you and maybe some friends take one.
It’s like buying the bigger size that’s slightly more expensive only to realize it would have been cheaper to buy the smaller one because the extra stuff got thrown out after it went bad plus there’s extra packaging, even if the value per unit is worse.
I try to explain this to my wife every time she buys the humongous restaurant-size jar of mayonnaise… “But it was buy 2 get one half off…”
I exaggerate, but only slightly.
Removed by mod
More responsible than gun manufacturers.
The point of chips is to feed you the point of a gun is to kill. Why would they pull their product for doing what it’s supposed to.
I agree with you though.
Removed by mod
Capsaicin is a neurotoxin but an allergy makes more sense. He collapsed, so anaphylaxis?
I am not a doctor but I like to play one with Google searches.
I’ve watched House, I can confidently say it was definitely not Lupus
Except for that one time it was
Exception to prove the rule.
Lol my favorite recent story to tell people lately is that I got diagnosed with lupus a monthish ago. Prior to the suggestion, I had been watching House again. The universe was just like, “fuck you” lol
It was obviously sarcoidosis!
I haven’t tried the “one chips” but are you sure you aren’t thinking of their regular ghost pepper chips?
Actually, I found that putting them in the freezer gives them a really lovely delayed affect, where you can very slowly feel the spice picking up.
Shame about that kid, though. I can’t imagine the sorrow :(
Idk how the legal accusations stand up, as there are warnings and liability disclaimers everywhere on it…
I’ve eaten it, most of my friends have, and we were fine. But I’ve known others who reacted much more strongly to just a crumb, so I can see how with preexisting conditions that could happen.
In doing some research, I found that there have been quite a few people reporting stomacheaches and being hospitalized from previous years of the chip. There’s also been a case of 15 year old dying from a stroke caused by the Carolina Reaper pepper. I hate to say it, but I think that maybe we’re taking these peppers too far to the point that they are becoming hazardous to our health.
Wanting to prove how tough you are to others who may or may not even care has always been hazardous to one’s health. We’re only about a decade past a challenge to eat laundry detergent.
No amount of liability disclaimers will protect you if you sell your products to 14 year olds
That sound like someone with a trench coat selling chip to kids on a dark corner with flickering light.
Marketing an outright painful food product to teenagers by framing it as a social media “challenge” is a bit scummy, frankly.
I had the hottest one one time and legitimately thought I was going to have to go to the hospital. I ate it around 1PM and my entire rest of my day was gone to extreme sickness like I’ve never experienced before. To this day I get very sick feeling any time I smell something similar to it.
I love spicy foods but the super hot peppers are just different. Even a small amount in food where it doesn’t taste spicy will wreck my gi tract for at least 24 hours. Shit ain’t natural
They aren’t meant for people who enjoy flavor. They’re meant for dudebros who are cripplingly insecure in their masculinity and feel a constant need to prove themselves, even though no one gives a shit. The same people who buy dude wipes and giant pickups.
Or they’re just people like me who like to hurt themselves once in a while with of friends, and commiserate at our poor choices. I don’t have a single friend who’s a “dudebro”, and I don’t drive a truck. Shove your stupid prejudices in your asshole along with a Carolina Reaper.
I bought kits like this for my 14 year old bil for Christmas last year because he’s like this. I desperately hope it’s all a phase
Removed by mod
Goes to show that we know so little still about gut biology.
this is hands down a ‘shit happens’ events. its not always someones fault someone gets hurt.
Any idea how many scovilles these things are?
It wasn’t too long ago that I had a habit of using 600,000 scoville unit hot sauce on things. Now I’m wondering if I was taking my life in my hands every time I had that sauce.
Likely more than 2 million.
The kid likely had a preexisting condition or maybe some genetic disposition as hundreds if not thousands of people eat food at that heat level each day without incident.
Or it had nothing to do with the chip at all. The article says that the cause of death hasn’t been determined yet.
Removed by mod
If you built up to it and you don’t get a negative reaction youll be fine. Spouse eats super spicy, to me, just fine. I’ll occassionally put a little of it and I’m get a runny nose, flop sweat and a bowel movement with half an hour after eating. These people probably dont eat a lot of spicy food. Its like running a marathon straight from being a couch potato. Your body is not ready for that.
Removed by mod
A fresh Carolina Reaper ranks somewhere around 1.6 million scoville. I grew a bush of em last year, they’re evil little things. I ended up just composting them.
I don’t have any opinion on the safety of the chip, but I’m glad it’s being discontinued just because of the over indulgent packaging.
Surprisingly good take. I agree
