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Too Much Black Licorice Can Put You In The Hospital

Black licorice is the devil's dick cheese. That's not me talking, that's science. Ask Neil deGrasse Tyson. If that statement isn't enough to make you stop eating black licorice and things flavored with its vile flavinoids, you should feel bad about yourself, because I'm a registered life coach and I know what's best for you. And also because too much black licorice can cause dangerously high blood pressure and extremely low potassium. That might not sound dangerous in those terms, but it can get so bad that it can lead to seizures, brain swelling, and arrhythmia.

It doesn't even take that much of the stuff to cause it. A 51-year-old Canadian man ended up in the hospital because he ate a bag of 50 licorice jelly beans every day -- which is weird, but it's not like there's a medical warning on the bag telling you not to. With no history of hypertension, it was difficult to figure out what the problem was, until someone noticed the dude was still eating the jelly beans even in the hospital. Cut off the beans, and the problem goes away.

The same thing happened to a 10-year-old boy in Italy who had taken up the habit of eating black licorice like it was a real food item. He was hospitalized with convulsive seizures and brain swelling, along with low potassium and elevated cortisol levels. When everything else about him seemed normal, a quick review of his diet, which included 20 licorice toffees a day for four months, got to the root of the problem (which is that he had apparently declared war on his own tongue).

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Chia Seeds Can Soak Up Enough Fluid To Choke You

They call chia seeds a "superfood," which is a word food marketers came up with for stuff that tastes like a duck's fart but they need to sell it anyway. It's jammed to the gills with all kinds of nutrients, which is nice, but if you get chia seeds wet, they expand into a weird, gelatinous slurry. They absorb 27 times their weight in water, which is great if you want to rub a paste on pottery ...

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Stupidly Hot Peppers Can Break Your Brain

They say the Carolina Reaper is the hottest pepper in the world, achieving the amazing feat of being a food that cannot actually be eaten. Reapers average about 1.5 million Scoville heat units (the units used to measure the perceived heat in a pepper as determined by scientist Scoville J. Assmelter). For perspective, a jalapeno will be between 2,500 and 10,000. Sriracha sauce is 1,000-2,500, and that stuff will make you poop hot tar, so you can imagine what a Reaper does.

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Swallowing Enough Chewing Gum Can Kill You

You ever have someone tell you not to eat gum because it'll grow a gum tree in your stomach, or you can't ever digest it, or it'll make you fart pink bubbles? People say those things because they learned science from a kid on the playground who spent too much time sniffing markers. But there is a problem with gum, and it's so much worse than any of us ever imagined that it'll make you wish you had a gum tree growing out of your ass.

Samantha Jenkins was 19 when she fucking fell into a coma and died due to deathly low levels of potassium, magnesium, calcium, and sodium. She suffered a fatal lack of oxygen to her brain as a result of convulsions caused by the mineral deficit. To be so devoid of all of those nutrients with no underlying condition present was pretty much unheard of. So what the hell happened? Gum. Goddamn gum.

Jenkins reportedly ate 14 pieces of gum every day. An autopsy found large chunks of green gum in her stomach, and her mom found dozens of empty packs in her room. The gum she ate was artificially sweetened with aspartame and sorbitol, and artificial sweeteners are used in hospitals as laxatives. At the dose Jenkins was giving herself, she was very likely causing the malabsorption that led to her fatal condition. Fresh breath is not worth some bullshit like that.

Doctors were reluctant to lay the blame on the gum directly, as this is uncharted waters, but with no other cause on the table, it's the one that makes the most sense. I know we're making a bunch of jokes here because our job is to entertain, but in general, it's a bad idea to constantly swallow gum, and you definitely shouldn't let small children do it (you know, the ones least likely to listen to you on this subject). In small amounts they'll just poop it out (your system can't dissolve it), but if they swallow a bunch, it can absolutely block up their system, and things will get ugly fast.

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For more ways the things that nourish you destroy you, check out 5 Shocking Side Effects Of Foods You Eat Every Day and 6 Bizarre Side Effects Of Foods You Eat Every Day.

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