The hot pepper linked to teen's death can cause arteries in the brain to spasm.

The hot pepper linked to teen’s death can cause arteries in the brain to spasm.

  • waz@lemmy.world
    159·
    1 year ago

    Harris Wolobah’s cause of death is not yet determined; it’s not certain if the chip is to blame.

    Maybe, just maybe we should put our pitchforks away until we know if the chip mentioned is responsible?

  • 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 ℹ️@yiffit.netEnglish
    65·
    1 year ago

    I can almost guarantee it wasn’t the chip itself that did anything, but some underlying condition the kid already had that was exasperated by the spice. Perhaps even an allergic reaction. The media is blowing up on this without even knowing the actual cause of death.

    • sebinspace@lemmy.world
      34·
      1 year ago

      Pretty fucken disgraceful if you ask me. Take a tragic accident, turn it into clickbait, and use it to drive traffic to your “news” site to get more eyes on your bullshit advertisements.

      God I fucking hate this planet.

      • 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 ℹ️@yiffit.netEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        Dragon’s Breath and other extremely spicy peppers are definitely labeled with warnings that they can cause severe anaphylaxis and death by choking.

        The media spins that a lot tho. The scientists that cultivated the Dragon Breath pepper and tested it on the scoleville scale gave it a typical boilerplate allergy warning; news spins that as “worlds hottest pepper is LETHAL.”

    • chumbalumber
      1·
      1 year ago

      You may have meant exacerbated, not exasperated.

      Sorry to be that annoying person on the internet

  • redfellow@sopuli.xyz
    57·
    1 year ago

    Still no proof capsaicin caused the death. I’m eagerly awaiting for what the autopsy unveils

      • retro@infosec.pub
        2·
        1 year ago

        There’s no proof aliens didn’t shoot him with an invisible laser… also interested to see what the autopsy unveils

  • Treczoks@lemmy.world
    31·
    1 year ago

    No. It just highlights the stupidity of people following online challenges.

    Apart from that, those chips were labeled 18+, IIRC. How the heck did they get into the mouth of a 14 year old?

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
    23·
    1 year ago

    I’m fine if an adult wants to take this kind of risk, but this kid died and other kids have been hospitalized. We protect children from all sorts of other risky things that we allow adults to purchase. I don’t think we should allow children to purchase this.

    No, it won’t stop kids from getting ahold of it sometimes. We can’t stop kids from getting ahold of alcohol and cigarettes all the time either. We should still make it as hard as possible for them to get it until they’re adults- although I think 16 should be the drinking age and 18 the driving age, but that’s another story.

    • SHITPOSTING_ACCOUNT@feddit.de
      16·
      1 year ago

      From my understanding, this is the first case of actually serious consequences, and I’m sure millions of these chips have been eaten by now.

      We need more stupid challenges that cause only pain but no serious, long term injury. It’s a good way to learn not to do stupid challenges, keeping kids away from the stupider ones that are more likely to do permanent harm.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
        7·
        1 year ago

        I mean… the other way to learn to not do stupid challenges is to just not have stupid challenges because they’re stupid and we explain that they’re stupid.

        • SHITPOSTING_ACCOUNT@feddit.de
          5·
          1 year ago

          I’ve heard that no matter how often you tell a kid the stove is hot and will burn them, they won’t stop trying to touch it until the pain has taught them. Not sure if it’s true (or true for all kids), but I would expect the other side of that (“once they’ve burned themselves, they learn”) to be mostly reliable.

          • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
            3·
            1 year ago

            What exactly do they learn out of this? Not to eat single chips that are super spicy? I don’t get the lesson.

            • SHITPOSTING_ACCOUNT@feddit.de
              6·
              1 year ago

              Don’t do stupid shit because the Internet tells you it’s a challenge.

              The next time it may not be a chip but a tide pod. Or “crystals” made by blowing bubbles with a straw into a bucket of bleach and vinegar (the blowing makes sure that the victim takes a deep breath of the World War 1 gas warfare recreation they just mixed up).

        • halvo317@sh.itjust.works
          4·
          1 year ago

          I’m going to do the laying still in traffic challenge because the Russian Roulette challenge isn’t cool anymore

        • matthewmercury@reddthat.com
          3·
          1 year ago

          I hate that a corp saw people organically having stupid fun with stupid dare fads, something humans have been doing forever, and they made a product out of it.

        • persolb@lemmy.ml
          2·
          1 year ago

          Problem is that kids start out dumb until the learn stuff.

          I talk to some of my aunts and uncles from pre-internet and I’m not sure how they survived the stupid stuff they did.

          • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
            4·
            1 year ago

            I’m 46. I’m pre-internet. I did stupid shit. But not as stupid as the shit kids are doing now. I did things like walk through a bunch of poison ivy and thorn bushes because they were at the edge of the field and recess was boring.

            • QuinceDaPence@kbin.social
              9·
              1 year ago

              walk through a bunch of poison ivy and thorn bushes

              I feel like that’s more likely to kill someone than hot chip.

  • porkins@sh.itjust.works
    15·
    1 year ago

    I did the challenge two days ago. It was the third spiciest I’ve had. Was definitely something that could do harm to someone who doesn’t know how to handle ultra-spicy. The kid won a Darwin Award. You can’t ban spicy food nor should you. This is a parenting issue. If this kid didn’t die from this skull and crossbones coffin wrapped in warnings, it would have been some other TikTok challenge like drinking bleach.

    • devious@lemmy.world
      27·
      1 year ago

      Random fact, but children under 16 are not eligible for Darwin Awards.

      https://darwinawards.com/rules/rules4.html

      Also, I find it interesting that you are basically insulting this kid for doing something stupid while saying you did it in the same paragraph. I guess you are not stupid because it didn’t kill you?

      • porkins@sh.itjust.works
        2·
        1 year ago

        The instructions state that it is for adults only. I essentially have body training in handling extreme spicy. At 14, you are considered a man in most societies. Why should we wussify American youth? At that age, I was eating habaneros. I blame the parents for not introducing him to spicy food and allowing him to make an informed decision.

      • PsychedSy@sh.itjust.works
        1·
        1 year ago

        The “please pick up your kid they passed out” should have signalled to the parents to maybe visit a doctor. Maybe the mom deserves the award.

    • fear@kbin.social
      7·
      1 year ago

      The 14 year old ate the chip at school, there’s no mention of who gave the chip to him. It’s a school administration problem, but hardly a parenting issue unless the mother bought the chip for her son and sent it to school with him. The mother came to pick the boy up right away when he complained of pain, rushed him to the hospital when he lost consciousness, and she is now speaking out to warn others about the dangers of this stupid challenge.

        • magnusrufus@lemmy.world
          2·
          1 year ago

          Warnings of what? Which warning would have made risk clear? Death imagery is part of their marketing not a legitimate warning. The kid eating a commercially sold food item is not on the same level as drinking bleach. It’s weirdly cold and callous victim blaming to say that he was so stupid that he would inevitably die in some similar way. It rings the same as the people that scoff at the McDonalds coffee thing. Yeah you shouldn’t ban hot coffee but you probably should ban serving coffee hot enough to cause third degree burns.

          • porkins@sh.itjust.works
            2·
            1 year ago

            These warnings. They are prominently displayed. It is a stretch to call him a victim. The only exception would be if someone tricked him into eating the chip.

              • porkins@sh.itjust.works
                1·
                1 year ago

                The keep out of reach of children and the adults only warning. Also, the thousands of videos online of people showing how hot the chip is or even ones of kids his age eating it and resulting in an ambulance trip. It wasn’t even the hottest thing that I’ve eaten honestly, but it was enough to make most people have a very bad time. The hottest natural thing that I have eaten was hot sauce prepared by the founder of Halal Guys many years ago when he worked at the original location. He called it a bad batch because it was too strong. The hottest extract was the hot wing challenge from The Mean Fiddler. This was third, but ranked closely with quite a few others.

                • magnusrufus@lemmy.world
                  1·
                  1 year ago

                  Honestly you think keep out of reach of children on a food item is the same level of warning as not drinking bleach?

  • Swiggles
    11·
    1 year ago

    The effects on blood pressure are well known, but that it can cause spasm of arteries is interesting.

    Many people eat lots of spicy food daily and I never heard of serious health issues. Especially a single chip might contain a concentrated amount of capsaicin, but it is unlikely to contain much more in volume then a hot plate of chili con carne or even just a hand full of raw jalapenos. So I assume it is some underlying condition and a shock reaction and not the capsaicin itself.

    I would love to see more research into this.

      • Swiggles
        4·
        1 year ago

        I could have also picked a habanero which is admittedly a lot more spicy and it used to be the hottest pepper in the world, but it usually doesn’t cause a big reaction either.

        Anyway, that’s missing the point. I was talking about the total amount of capsaicin which can’t be really high in just one chip. It is just a tiny amount of concentrated capsaicin and I believe that people usually consume more with a regular spicy meal. Hence my believe that not the capsaicin itself is the problem.

  • PaupersSerenade@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    10·
    1 year ago

    ‘The chip was only intended for adults’. I know there are plenty of adults that adore a challenge of spice foods. My experience in marketing tells me these people knew exactly what demographic they’d be hitting hardest with this type of challenge.

    • waz@lemmy.world
      6·
      1 year ago

      It’s a gradient, right? And there probably should be a line somewhere. A line where on one side is considered generally safe and the other side should be considered risky. If this needs regulation, how do we define the line, and what sort of limit should be put on it?

      • The Snark Urge@lemmy.worldEnglish
        4·
        1 year ago

        You’re the only person asking my opinion about it - but I would generally be in favor of having a panel of qualified doctors, food scientists with published work in this field, and lawyers with experience in prosecuting food industry malfeasance to undertake a review of the case history and risk factors to propose a generally reasonable legal framework for what is an acceptable health risk for the general public, whom is most vulnerable and how the risk can be mitigated at point of sale, how those metrics can be rigorously upheld by the food industry, and what should be done with companies that fail to comply.

        That sounds like what should happen in a world where a corn chip can kill a child.

      • porkins@sh.itjust.works
        1·
        1 year ago

        In all the years of super spicy food existing on this planet, there are almost no deaths reported. He had some other undiagnosed health issue for sure. Waiting on the autopsy.