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.
That’s a misleading comparison.
The product in question in principle is safe and was used as intended. That the kid died from it, has nothing to do with the product itself. Snicker’s wouldn’t be pulled, if someone with unknown peanut allergy died from eating one.
THAT’S a misleading comparison.
The One Chip isn’t dangerous due to allergens per se, but compounds which can have a strong effect on people’s internal biology the same way a pharmaceutical would especially in the concentrations they’re using to get the super spicy outcome. Regardless of whether the kid had a preexisting condition if the chip’s affect on his body caused changes which contributed to his death then there could be others out there who would have similar complications and as the product continues to gain popularity there is increasing liklihood of such things happening.
These things aren’t tested for safety in any way. Hell, a 14 year old was able to get ahold of the product with presumably no issues.
Paqui is being safe by recalling the product, and hopefully we can get to the bottom of this before anyone else is hurt.
What the fuck are you talking about? Have you not heard of the FDA? 😂
Yeah I suppose that statement was a little broader than it needed to be. Since you can’t seem to pick up on context clues, I’ll spell it out for you: the FDA is not going to put every single food product to market through rigorous testing like you would for a pharmaceutical (nor should they). They are going to weigh in on the overall safety of the ingredients used and that the product is generally safe.
They aren’t going to evaluate whether there are potential harms or comorbodities for every single slice of the population, which could lead to complications for products like the One Chip which have high concentrations of potentially harmful compounds.
With something like hot sauce you can point to the serving size as a safety factor, but the chip is meant to be eaten all at once.
Again, Paqui is being safe by recalling the product until more information is available.
I think they should follow suit with some of the other extremely spicey foods. A retailer that I used to go to made you sign a waver and required that you prove that you were at least a certain age to buy it. Part of getting the waiver to sign was being told what it can do.
I didn’t buy the hot sauce myself, but the staff explained that it could legitimately burn your skin if you left it on for too long. I wish I remember what the sauce was called.
I was shocked at the time that you had to sign a waver to buy hot sauce. It was a weird concept to me. Incidents like this must be why. It makes sense, now that I think about it.
For real… going back to the snickers comment, their version of the FDA would pull any food that anybody could be allergic to.
I’ll admit when I first was this story I kind of rolled my eyes at it, but the more you look into it the more it makes sense.
An unfortunate tragedy, a kid lost his life. That’s terrible and we should do our best to make sure it doesn’t happen again.