FOOD POISONING

A RECIPE FOR RIGOR MORTIS 

Death can come in many forms, avocados included. If we can stomach enough of them, many of our daily foods are lethal. Down 30- plus glasses of water in a few hours, for instance, and you’ll do yourself in. (One major cause of MDMA- related deaths: water intoxication caused in part by drug-induced extreme thirst.) Of course, the human stomach usually doesn’t hold much more than 4 cups, but the toxic effects of overindulgence can build up as your intestines move the food along. Here’s how much you’d need to eat of a few foods to flirt with fatality.

BEEF LIVER

Organ meats pack more nutrients than muscles. Livers in particular contain so much vitamin A that overindulgence overloads our own livers—and increases intracranial pressure to hazardous levels.

WATERMELON

Heaps of any fluid-rich fruit could kill you. Cells inundated by water expand to normalize their electrolyte balance. Swelling like this in the brain can damage nerve cells and pinch off the oxygen supply.

NUTMEG

Eat as little as 6.5 teaspoons of this holiday spice to get a 12-hour high (and a two-day hangover), thanks to the psychoactive chemical myristicin. Eat multiple cups to trigger organ failure.

COFFEE

Too much caffeine can make you dizzy, raise your blood pressure, and even give you seizures. Way too much can send your heart into fibrillation, an arrhythmic beat that fails to pump blood.

AVOCADO

This fatty fruit contains almost twice as much potassium as a banana. When too much of the metal hits the bloodstream, it interrupts the heart’s rhythmic beating, causing it to slow—or even stop.

DARK CHOCOLATE

Like caffeine, the theobromine in cocoa dilates blood vessels and increases heart rate. Scarf enough, and these effects can combine to drop pressure while speeding up your ticker: total shutdown.

In "Popular Science", USA, Winter issue 2018, excerpts p. 12. Digitized, adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.