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.
woah be careful you’re about to dismantle the whole anti vax argument if you keep talking like that
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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.
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Are you sure you aren’t talking about Da Bomb? The Last Dab isn’t that bad.
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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.
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The Taco Bell stomach is more likely food poisoning than anything remotely spicy.
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Do you think Taco Bell is representative of actual Mexican food? Blaming Taco Bell isn’t racist, its blaming shit tier food
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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 love seeing pictures that white people post of their food talking about how excited they are and it looks like there’s not a flake of seasoning on that. I don’t get how they live like that.
I had one of these chips too. It was really bad for like 10-15 minutes and then it was okay.
Also cholula slaps
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.
Spices are meant to flavor things.
Amen.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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*Tabasco
I don’t like Tobasco either, but I feel like for the opposite reason. The flavor is the problem, while I love a similarly vinegary hot sauce like Louisiana which I’d say has less other flavor
Same, I don’t like the taste of Tobasco. I like Valentina hot sauce. It’s very mild, but I love the flavor. I usually use it to slather burritos or put in tacos. It also makes an ok hot wing sauce when mixed with butter.
Tabasco sauce tastes super sweet to me. Like pure sugar.
It’s not good.
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.
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Thank you because I definitely said they’re the same.
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
Why are people taking it for granted that peppers can kill you? They almost never, if ever, do. No, they can’t, in a practical sense, and it’s very weird you’re immediately ready to believe that they do
Do you know anything about nightshades? Cause they’ve been killing people for thousands of years.
Confidently incorrect I see. How many people died from tomatoes / peppers since written history began? I’m guessing approximately zero.
“Theoretically, one could eat enough really hot chiles to kill you,” he says. “A research study in 1980 calculated that three pounds of extreme chilies in powder form — of something like the Bhut Jolokia — eaten all at once could kill a 150-pound person.”
So yeah probably the same number of people who died of a weed overdose. Another thing that is technically possible.
No need to guess, about 70 people die each year from eating green potatoes.
The “nightshades” in this product are most likely tomatoes, not the deadly nightshades you’re thinking of.
Have you ever known anyone who died of nightshade?
No, they don’t. I’d be surprised if there were 3 documented cases ever.
Mostly because anything that actually has a significant amount of solanine in it, like tomato greens, or datura leaves, or bittersweet nightshade berries, tastes like absolute crap and you would have to force yourself to eat it to poisoning.
Sounds like a garbage opinion from a 4 year old who refuses to eat 75% of modern cuisine
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?
Pretty sure that’s the law actually
Meh.
Even as someone who loves really spicy foods, I think the ever-escalating spicy trend is getting ridiculous. After a certain point you don’t taste anything and its just a dumb one-upsmanship contest.
People would litterly send men to the moon just to one up each other.
Same. Also some people just don’t seem to be able to identify any flavor beneath the heat.
My limit is this one Asian food place in Houston. I got some chicken that I didn’t realize was hot. Me and my coworkers go back to the office (a very large room). I open that to go box and everyone in the room choked from the heat of just the smell. It was strong even from the other side of this room that’s probably 80x80ft room with 40ft ceilings.
I was crying, sweating, turning red, nose running everything. Everybode else was getting a little bit of bloodshot eyes.
Of course then everyone tried convincing me to eat the pepper itself. Ain’t no way.
When I was finished we wraped it in like 3 plastic bags and took it outside and down the sidewalk and put it in a trashcan there.
But that was some damn good chicken. 5 stars, would suffer again.
Sounds like you all had a great time.
You don’t eat this chip because it’s good, you eat it because it’s one of the spiciest things you can get (and it’s fun).
This is an extreme example. Plenty of other things out there are just a dumb pissing contest to see who can make the hottest sauce, wings, chip, ribs, etc.
I looove hot and spicy foods and refuse to take part in any of that nonsense.
People look at me like I’m crazy and I have to explain that, yes, I like hot and spicy flavors but that doesn’t mean I’d eat a spoonful of godamn lava.
I enjoy watching people do it though and always offer to buy drinks for someone who does it, lol.
As a lover of spicy foods, and more importantly, a late 30s fella, I agree completely. If you don’t enjoy it, what’s the point?
I’m tired of restaurants basically wafting a Carolina Reaper over their salsas or sauces and advertising their barely-jalapeno-grade garbage as being particularly spicy. One drop of extract in a bulk batch of sauce for a restaurant does not make it spicy, but it certainly lets vanilla consumers with no real tolerance feel like they’re able to take actual heat from real peppers.
I love spicy food and I’ve done the One Chip Challenge just for the thrill, but it’s not really done as a “food” any more than skydiving is done for transportation. It arguably shouldn’t be sold to minors, but it’s actually hot, not just marketing, and arguably is more responsible for creating the trend in the first place than jumping on the bandwagon later. The Challenge has been sold for a long time.
I think Popeyes or Wendy’s was advertising some ghost pepper sandwich recently and it was decent and had a little bit of a kick, but it was far from being hot. Same thing with various “hot” chips.
If it is a mass market brand I have very low expectations when it comes to spice level. If it had the slightest vit of a kick, I’m surprised.
It was Wendy’s and it really wasn’t that hot. They also had “Ghost Pepper Ranch” for the nuggets and it’s really mild.
It’s not really sold as a food. It’s sold as a game. That’s why it’s called the “one chip challenge”. You’re supposed to eat it and then hold out as long as possible without driving something to sedate the burn.
It’s also not that spicy. Last time I had it, I was mostly coughing from the stale chip and dry, powdery seasoning. The heat itself didn’t bother me. Their regular sized bags of chips were way spicier to me.
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.
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.
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Vibrant?
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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.
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.
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This was my first thought. This must be peak “we don’t give a shit if our climate will kill us tomorrow”
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.
And talk shit over wifi cause they phone never on.
anyone born after 2008
Anyone born after 2008 would be under 15, most children can’t cook.
If you can’t cook even a basic meal by the time you’re a teenager, your parents are fucking up.
Depends what you mean by “cook a basic meal”. Under 15, I would expect someone to be able to feed themselves ie put someone in the microwave and assemble a basic meal, but I wouldn’t expect them to be able to cook most things from scratch. If nothing else, teenagers are lazy and with the amount of effort it takes to get them to cook a meal you’ll probably end up just doing it yourself.
that th joke
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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
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
this is hands down a ‘shit happens’ events. its not always someones fault someone gets hurt.
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
Oh… that’s why the ampm down the street had them fully stocked one day and then the whole display was gone the next. I didn’t even get a chance to try it.
Goes to show that we know so little still about gut biology.
