I’m talking about the packaged mix that you make on the stovetop. I saw a TV magazine show the other day where a child ate a package of ingredients for the product and died due to a massive intake of sodium. I have used this same brand and often consumed the entire contents at one sitting and I’m still kicking. So, how come it killed this kid and not me?
How much do you weigh? How much did the child?
What brand is it, out of curiosity?
Intake of sodium isn’t the problem, it’s taking in sodium without enough water. When it’s cooked, you’ve got water in the rice to properly dilute the sodium to safe levels. Dry, it might make you sick (probably not kill you, because of your greater body weight.)
Once I found a huge glob of “Hint of Lime” flavoring in a bag of tortilla chips. It was amazingly tasty, but it was like eating a salt lick. And it made me seriously sick - nauseated and lightheaded and sweaty and weak with an amazing headache. I pounded as much water as I could, but still felt ill for the better part of three days. :eek:
Well I found this site that give the Lowest published toxic dose for humans as 12,357 mg/kg
for a 20 kilo child ( 44 Lbs) this is almost 8-3/4 ounces of pure salt.
I know they put a lot of salt in those mixes, but this is ridiculous. :rolleyes:
Could the problem have been an allergy to some ingredient in the mix?
There was a case a year or two back where a teenage boy ate a peanut butter sandwich, then kissed his girlfriend. The girlfriend died shortly after. The COD was anaphalactic shock – she was deathly (no pun intended) allergic to peanuts.
Please keep us apprised.
Love, Phil
<hijack>As it turned out, that wasn’t actually what she died of. http://www.news-medical.net/?id=17942
</hijack>
I’ve eaten an entire can of cooked Spam, with no other food, and had no water that day (maybe a soda or 2). Was that dangerous? I know Spam has quit a bit of sodium. I felt fine… I weigh about 160.
Maybe OP, you’re body can tolerate these types of things. It’s rare, but that’s just how some of us are. I can’t speak for most people.
Hmm… “The Salt Institute” might not be the greatest cite.
This site (Chemical Safety Data, The Physical and Theoretical Chemistry Laboratory, Oxford University) provides the following data:
ORL-RAT LD50 3000 mg kg-1
**ORL-MAN LDLO 1000 mg kg-1 **
ORL-MUS LD50 4000 mg kg-1
IPR-MUS LD50 2602 mg kg-1
ICV-MUS LD50 131 mg kg-1
SKN-RBT LD50 > 10000 mg kg-1
Where LDLO = Lowest published lethal concentration
A lot of dried foods have outrageous amounts of salt in them. One of my professors had an entire shelf in his bookcase filled with emptied boxes of Lipton’s Cup-o-Soup, as if they were books. He ate a cup every day for lunch. Then he stopped, because, he said, his doctor told him to cut back on salt.
OK, I’ll buy that. But that is still 20,000mg of salt to (maybe) kill a 20 kg child. According to nutrition info on the box, a box of dirty rice contains 620 mg of salt. Which is a bunch, but way the hell under a lethal dose.
Yeah, I don’t think that it’d be at all likely that a single box of that rice would kill a child from salt intake.
That’s per serving. 620*5 servings = 3100. Also, 20 kilos is a big kid. While I didn’t see the report, I’d expect such behavior of a 1 or 2 year old, at 6-10 kilos, not a kindergartner.
Still, as you say, way under the LDL0. I don’t think it’s likely that a single box would kill anyone, but it could make a small child pretty darn sick. If he had an undetected heart or kidney issue, I wouldn’t consider death impossible.