The wrong bits of fugu will poison you, a coconut to the head will knock you out, and toddlers and preschools choke on hot dogs.
But did you realize that brown rice chips won’t soften from saliva at all if they get stuck in your throat?
My poor carb-loving doggy found that out recently. She eats any bread, chip, or cereal you set in front of her, including spicy rice crisps. When she last tried to chomp a spicy-sweet rice chip, she didn’t break the chip up enough to swallow without getting it stuck in her throat for several days. (She lived off of broth mixed with psylium until she managed to cough it up. That, and her massive fat reserves. She’s better now.)
What other food stuffs are dangerous but don’t seem like they should be?
I read a murder mystery long ago about a woman that beat her husband to death with a frozen leg of lamb. It was thawed and in the oven by the time the cops got there, and I want to say she served the murder weapon to them for dinner…
Oakminster, I haven’t actually read the story, but I’ve seen that adapted for television. Makes you think about frozen meat in a different way, certainly.
My beloved popcorn… Ever had a single hull stick, upside down, right on the back of your tongue? Being concave, it creates like a suction and it is *IMPOSSIBLE *to get it loose without finger intervention. Which, of course, being so far back on the tongue, sets off the gag reflex. Ugh.
Doesn’t stop me from eating it tho… snackfood of the gods!
My brother in law, the EMT told me that the number one thing that kills small children (2 and under I think) when they choke on it is peanut butter, since it’s so sticky they can’t cough it up.
Actually, it’s Roald Dahl’s Lamb to the Slaughter*, which existed as a short story before being dramatized on Hitcyhcock, and later on Roald Dahl’s Tales of the Unexpected. It was one of my mother’s favorites, and it took me some time 9in the pre-Internet days) to track it down from her description. I ended up giving her a copy of it.
When I was real young, I swallowed a Dorito without chewing it enough and it messed my throat up bad. There’s enough scarring that I have to have a drink with me if I’m eating something because everything stops halfway down and very slowly moves its way down. I have to take a sip of water to make it go fast so that I can eat a meal in a decent amount of time. I’ve only choked bad once, usually it stops far enough down that I can breathe fine, I just can’t swallow anything. For something stuck real bad, any water I swallow comes back up and I just have to wait for the food to dissolve. I’m one of those strange people that hates food and would take pills for all of my nutrition if possible.