It’s been a late night watching TV, and your hand drifts
over to the bag of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos beside you.
You reach the bottom and realise that you’ve
eaten the whole bag without thinking about it.
Your stomach feels a little icky, but then you remember the
second bag in your cupboard and you begin to salivate again.
You think that if you just drink a little your stomach will feel better,
so you down a tall glass of water and snatch the second bag of chips
out of the kitchen, tearing into it as you sit back down on your couch.
The hot and sweet spices dancing on your tongue,
and the heat radiating to the top of your mouth.
Suddenly, the pain in your stomach doubles, triples,
quadruples into a stabbing pain in your gut.
It’s too much to bear so you call the hospital, and
an ambulance arrives moments later to carry you off.
Next thing you know, you’re on a gurney rolling down a hallway toward
the surgical theatre, en route to have one of your organs removed.
This sounds like a freak accident, but back in 2018, rapper Lil Xan
had to check himself into the hospital after one too many Hot Cheetos
after it “ripped something in his stomach open a little bit and he
puked a little blood.” But competitive eaters like Matt Stonie are able
to slam back heaps of hot, ultra-spicy foods with little consequence.
Cheeto driven hospitalizations aren’t new.
In just a span of one year, a single children’s hospital in
Memphis, Tennassee watched 150 patients come to them with
gastric distress caused by the tantalising spicy snack.
What’s going on, and how could something as
tasty as Flamin’ Hot Cheetos hospitalise you?
After experiencing stomach pains amidst eating a bag of
Flamin’ Hot Cheetos and Fuego Takis, 17-year-old Rene
Craighead in summer 2018, was sent to the hospital.
The teenager made a habit of eating hot chips,
and her mother, also named Rene, noted that her
daughter would typically eat 4 bags of snacks a week.
“She loves them” Mrs Craighead said, “Every time I go out
she says, ‘Bring me back some Hot Takis, bring me back some
Hot Chips.’ I want to make her happy, so I brought them back.
She was eating big bags and would take them to school with her,”
Notably, Flamin’ Hot Cheetos—trademark—were banned back in
2012 across school districts in New Mexico, and California.
If you bring a bag to school, you risk having it confiscated.
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Now, let’s get back into it!
When Rene went to school, she began feeling sick to her
stomach, and was soon taken to the hospital for surgery.
Doctors were forced to remove Rene’s gallbladder.
News reports don’t specify why, but her mother believed it was from
eating too many spicy chips, warning parents in news interviews.
However, Healthline tells us the most common cause for
gallbladder removal are gallstones, hard deposits of
waste and bile that can plug biliary ducts, leading
to all sorts of health problems, and a world of pain.
The National Institutes of Health say that they found that obesity
can make you more susceptible to develop gallstones, but medical
experts don’t usually associate spicy foods with gallstones though.
Rene isn’t the only one experiencing health issues after
eating Hot Cheetos, Takis, and other spicy foods however.
In fact, as far back as 2013, a copypasta circulated on the
internet claiming to be the first person perspective of a
mother whose 10 year old daughter was hospitalised by Takis.
She writes that her daughter experienced extreme stomach pain, and
when the doctor discovered that the girl ate “3 small bags of Takis
a month”, she immediately warned them about the risks of eating them.
The doctor continues, saying that she had seen a 16
month old suffering from throat cancer caused by Takis.
The toddler’s teeth couldn’t grow after his gums
“were affected” by the chips, and was now undergoing
chemotherapy at the Children’s Hospital in Los Angeles.
I don’t know if a toddler should necessarily
eat hot chips, but can that really cause cancer?
The mother then pleads with people to stop eating Takis, saying:
“PLEASE spread the word!
STOP eating takis and hot chips!!!
The doctor explained how the harsh chemicals and seasoning
in the chips cause corrosion in the throat and stomach.”
This story isn’t backed up by much of anything,
but hot foods are connected to stomach issues!
Dr Cary Canvender, a gastroenterologist at Le Bonheur
Children’s Hospital, says that he sees about 100 kids
a month with stomach pain connected to spicy snacks.
Specifically, “We do see tons of gastritis
and ulcer-related stuff due to spicy food”.
If you’ve mistakenly put a little too much hot sauce on your
burrito or chicken wing, or coffee that one time then you know
what it feels like when all that hot goodness hits your stomach.
So what is gastritis, and can something as innocuous
as Takis and Cheetos really give you ulcers?
Gastritis and ulcers are both stomach
issues, and they both feel terrible.
Gastritis is when your stomach lining becomes inflamed.
It can be caused by a great number of things, including infections,
burns, surgery, stress, long term use of prescription drugs,
smoking, too much alcohol, and, oh ho ho, eating spicy food!
It can be caused by a great number of things.
Symptom-wise, Gastritis presents as stomach pain,
vomiting, gas and hiccups, a feeling of burning in your
belly, and in bad cases, blood in your vomit and feces.
Generally if you consume anything to excess, it’s
going to throw some part of your body out of wack.
Medical professionals will usually give you
antacids to help neutralise your stomach acid.
Your stomach is really tough against acid, since its role
in your body is to break down food using acid, but anything
that vastly changes the acidity, can cause problems.
If gastritis is triggered by infection or some complication to another
illness, then treatment of the cause is their best course of action.
The real fear with gastritis is that it can lead to stomach
tumours, both cancerous and non-cancerous, as well as peptic ulcer
disease; ulcers in the stomach and the upper part of the intestine.
Ulcers, you may be wondering, are basically just
little sores that can develop in your stomach lining as
gastric ulcers, or your intestine as duodenal ulcers.
The most common symptom is abdominal pain as
the acid in your stomach irritates the wound.
One way you can limit the pain is to avoid having an
empty stomach, as well as taking antacids to help lower
the pH level in your stomach, much like with gastritis.
With treatment, gastritis can heal in about
12 weeks, and ulcers can heal in a few months.
So that’s what gastritis and ulcers are,
but how does spicy food affect your stomach?
And can Takis and Hot Cheetos really give you cancer?
Yvonne Juarez, Chief of Paediatrics at Kaiser Permanente-Fresno,
tells us that the spice in those snack foods increase stomach
acidity, and when eaten in high enough amounts, can trigger
stomach aches “so terrible they’re doubled over in pain”.
She continues saying that she’s “had
patients go to the ER because of it.
It’s insane, absolutely insane.”
And as we learned a moment ago, both gastritis and ulcers
can be caused by rapid increases in stomach pH values, so it
makes sense that eating food that can increase stomach acidity
in large quantities can give your stomach the bad rumblies.
That said, even a normal amount of spicy Takis and Hot Cheetos
can send you to the hospital, but not in the way you’d expect.
St. Louis Children’s Hospital paediatrician Dr.
Kathleen Berchelmann said that consuming large amounts of the
chips can turn your stool red, which can be misidentified as blood.
It’s because of the bright red food dyes found or put
into these snacks; like in Red Velvet cake, or food that
contain a lot of pigments such as red peppers and beets.
Of course, if you think there’s even a remote chance that
there’s blood in your stool, go to a doctor immediately.
So acidity can cause all sorts of problems for your
insides, but to understand how spicy these snacks
really are, we gotta learn what a Scoville unit is.
It’s the unit with hot measurements and even hotter wings.
Scoville Heat Units is the scale we use to measure
the spice level of any particular spice or product.
For example, a jalapeno pepper contains around 3,500 to
10,000 scoville units, Habanero has about 100,000-350,000,
and the Carolina Reaper pepper, the hottest pepper
on Earth, has about 1 million to 2 million units.
Just FYI, pepper spray contains between 2.5 million, and 5 million
Scoville units, and that’s specifically supposed to go into the eyes.
Scoville ratings are measured by how many equal
parts water need to be added to the extract of a
particular spice before you no longer detect any spice.
For example, oil from the Carolina Reaper would need
to be diluted in 1 to 2 million equal parts water.
It’s difficult to determine the actual spice levels of products,
since manufacturers usually don’t love revealing their super secret
spicy ingredients, but also because Scoville ratings are subjective.
That said, a local blog in Dallas, CraveDFW cites an
unknown “expert” claiming that Flamin’ Hot Cheetos sits
around 50,000 units, the equivalent of a chili pepper.
Similarly, website “How to Discuss” claims that
Fuego Takis are also similarly spiced to Flamin’
Hot Cheetos, at around 50,000 Scoville units.
We can’t verify these claims, since they don’t
source where they got their information, but it still
serves to illustrate how hot these snacks can be.
So what happens when we eat too much?
How much spice is too much spice?
Snopes spoke to Dr. Robert Glatter, emergency medicine physician at Lenox Hill
Hospital in New York, notes that some of his “patients who
have consumed Flamin’ Hot Cheetos in excess have complained
of pain in their upper abdomen, rising up into their chest,
likely due to the red peppers and spice contained in the snack.”
According to dietitian Vanessa Rissetto “If you suffer
from acid reflux, spicy foods can cause more acid, making
symptoms worse,” Even if acid reflux isn’t an issue for you,
spicy foods, as we learned, can inflame your stomach lining,
which impairs your stomach’s ability to break down food.
In addition to that, if you’re drinking water
to cool down your hot spicy mouth, you can find
yourself toilet bound with a bad case of diarrhea.
Rene Craighead ate somewhere in the realm of 4 bags of
Hot Cheetos a week, and our unnamed child in the copypasta
apparently only ate 3 small bags of Takis a month.
So how much is too much?
Unfortunately it’s not as easy as a specific hard cutoff.
How much spice one can handle changes from person to person.
In the end, everyone has a different tolerance for hot foods.
While Lil Xan was probably only able to handle a smaller amount
of spice before getting carted to the hospital, figures like Matt
Stonie who eats copious amounts of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos on his
Youtube channel, and Molly Schuyler, the Philadelphia buffalo wing
eating champ who managed to eat 501 hot buffalo wings in 30 minutes,
have physically trained their bodies to be able to handle it.
It’s impossible to give you a hard limit on how many Takis and Hot
Cheetos will give you stomach issues, since your body is unique and the
way it reacts to certain substances will be different than anyone else.
If you consume small amounts of hot food over time, like
developing calluses on your fingers, you can train your body
to digest hot foods more easily, and with less well… diarrhea.
Food products do have serving sizes for a reason, and the key to
avoid acid reflux, ulcers, and gastritis is to eat in moderation.
But what about our throat cancer claim
about Hot Takis from the copypasta though?
I’m happy to tell you that this claim is likely
false, or at the very least, greatly exaggerated.
According to urgent care doctors via Stanford
Medical, “There is no one single cause for cancer.
Scientists believe that it is the interaction
of many factors together that produces cancer.
The factors involved may be genetic, environmental,
or constitutional characteristics of the individual”.
That doesn’t mean that Takis and Hot Cheetos can’t cause cancer, but
that no doctor would claim that these snacks alone can cause cancer.
So can they?
Not anymore than anything else really.
There are many reports of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos and Takis sending
people to the hospital, but only one claiming to link these snacks
with cancer risk, our copypasta from an unverifiable source.
If there is a direct link between these hot snacks
and cancer, we haven’t fully elucidated that yet.
Really the takeaway from all of this is threefold.
One, spicy foods can increase your stomach acidity, and while it’s
usually really good at handling acids, since it uses acid to break down
our foods, by adding to the pH level we can give ourselves a bad time.
Second, no single factor can be said to have “caused” cancer,
and while it’s difficult to say that something 100% does not
cause cancer, we should be sceptical of any medical stories
that attribute cancer to any single substance or product.
Third, the best thing we can do to avoid stomach issues like
gastritis, ulcers, and acid reflux, is to simply consume in moderation.
All food products have serving sizes right on the
label planned out with the ingredients in mind.
For example, like we explored in a previous video, milk
is generally fine in small amounts, but drinking too much
can lead to vomiting, diarrhea, and painful bloating.
Just because something is safe, or even good
doesn’t mean it won’t ruin you in excess.
What?
In the words of Takis public relations, they “fully comply with
US Food and Drug Administration regulations, and all of the
ingredients in each flavour are listed in detail on the label.
Always check the serving size before snacking."
Just remember, eat in moderation, or else face spicy frustration.
And also pain, probably.
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