World’s Deadliest Foods

Fugu (© Greg Elms-Getty Images)
 
You may have heard that eating fugu (or pufferfish) is dangerous. But did you know how dangerous?
Let’s put it like this. The poison found in many of the internal organs of the fish - tetrodotoxin - is 1,200 times more poisonous than cyanide. A lethal dose is smaller than the head of a pin. Each fish could kill 30 people. Fugu chefs have to go through two or three years of specialised training before they can serve a delicacy that, incredibly, the Japanese can’t get enough of.
Fugu (© Greg Elms-Getty Images)

We know they put some dodgy stuff in processed meat these days but can hot dogs really be up there with fugu in the deadly food stakes? According to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) they can. A couple of years ago the organisation classified them as a choking hazard.
Yep, the shape of hot dogs make them potentially lethal to small children. Nearly a fifth of food-related asphyxiations in young children are caused by hot dogs. The AAP even recommends a redesign for one of America’s favourite foods.

Fugu (© Greg Elms-Getty Images)

The much hated milk-based dessert that some of us grew up forcing down (which bears an uncanny resemblance to milky frogspawn) is made from the root of the cassava plant.
And as it turns out, we had good reason to hate tapioca, even though we didn’t know it. Prepared incorrectly the cassava plant can produce a deadly dose of cyanide. It’s fair to say our tapioca was always prepared correctly, in that it didn’t kill us. But that didn’t make it nice.

Fugu (© Greg Elms-Getty Images)

Ackee is a delicious Jamaican fruit but if you find yourself down that way don’t go picking it off the tree and scoffing it down willy-nilly. It might just kill you.
Unripe ackee is packed with a poison called hypoglycin, and eating it causes the self-explanatory Jamaican Vomiting Sickness, which can in rare cases lead to coma and even death. Even when the ackee are ripe avoid the toxic black seeds like the plague and stick to the yellow bit around them. Or maybe have an apple?

Fugu (© Greg Elms-Getty Images)

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We’ve all heard of peanut allergy - we may even have it. But its prevalence doesn’t make it any less scary. Around 1% of the population are thought to have the allergy which is the commonest cause of food allergy deaths. It’s getting more common, too. Cases of peanut allergy tripled in the first decade of the century

Fugu (© Greg Elms-Getty Images)

We’re always being told to eat more cabbage, lettuce, spinach and kale, which are universally recognised as some of the healthiest foods around.
So what are they doing in this list? Well, the fact is, leafy greens are also responsible for more than their fair share of food poisoning outbreaks, including Norovirus and E.coli. An American study published in January found that leafy greens caused more cases than any other type of food, including poultry and fish. About one in five illnesses were linked to leafy green vegetables

Fugu (© Greg Elms-Getty Images)

Rhubarb can be a bit tart if you don’t add enough sugar to the pie mix, but deadly? We’re afraid so. Luckily it’s not the stalks, which we more commonly eat, but the leaves, which we tend to discard. Various authorities advise steering well clear of the leaves, which contain poisonous toxins whether cooked or raw.

Fugu (© Greg Elms-Getty Images)

In this Korean delicacy the legs are cut from a live octopus, so they’re still wriggling as you scoff them down, raw. They’re not poisonous, but they’re still potentially deadly.
In about six cases a year, the suckers attach themselves to the insides of the throats of diners and suffocate them. Experienced sannakji eaters chew them well, swallow fast and drink plenty of water. Kinda takes the fun out of eating, don’t you think?

Fugu (© Greg Elms-Getty Images)

Frogs are eaten around the world, but this illegal Namibian delicacy (the giant bullfrog is a protected species) comes with a serious health warning.
The giant bullfrog is pretty much packed with toxins and Namibians eat the whole thing, give or take a bone or two. The toxins can lead to kidney failure, which can be deadly if not treated promptly. The only safeguard against it is to eat the frog at the right time. It’s said that toxin levels are at their lowest, and the frog safest to consume, after the third rain of the year.

Fugu (© Greg Elms-Getty Images)

Chocolate is lovely but contains a chemical compound called theobromine, which would be poisonous if we didn’t process it so well. The only danger most of us have from chocolate is eating too much and getting fat.
That’s not the case with pets though, who can’t process theobromine nearly so well (proving, surely, that evolution designed people to eat chocolate). Chocolate can kill pets, and dogs in particular (cats rarely eat it, but many dogs will eat anything). As little as 10 ounces/285 grams of dark chocolate - and even less if it’s baker’s chocolate - can be lethal. So for Rover’s birthday treat this year stick to a bone.

 
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