This might belong in IMHO but it involves a food-like substance so I’m putting it here.
On another board, someone asked for revenge ideas on a workplace lunch thief. The usual extreme hot sauce and Ex-Lax ideas were put forth but someone chimed in saying those show evidence of revenge as no one eats a burrito with two tablespoons of ghost pepper sauce or packs laxative chocolate in their lunch. Instead he recommended a sandwich-bag portion of Haribo Sugar-free Gummy Bears. If more than a few are eaten at once, explosive diarrhea results (read the reviews).
A little research revealed that sugar alcohol is the culprit. Apparently it’s tasty but we can’t digest it (hence the low-cal). Our intestinal flora can digest it just fine though leading to intestinal distress. My God, it’s almost as bad as do it yourself fugu.
I can eat it with no problem (though I would never eat gummy bears or gummy anything else)but all the bags of sugarless candy I’ve seen contain the warning. I think they say something along the lines of “may have a laxative affect if consumed in large quantities”.
At work I keep a jar of candy on my desk. It’s there for people to enjoy but there are a few swine who have no problem stopping by my desk seven or eight times a day. Maybe I’ll start putting the sugar free variety in the jar.
If you’re talking xylitol, there’s also the added problem that it can kill your dog. I mean, yeah, there’s a lot of typical things we eat that are harmful to dogs, but this one is a little more under-the-radar than things like cocoa/chocolate and whatnot.