Someone once said “everything in moderation” and it was probably about alcohol or betting on robot fights but it can apply to almost everything. Food is one of the best examples because, as we know, overindulging in almost anything can have negative consequences. Eat too many gas station burritos and you may spend the rest of the day in the bathroom. There are pitfalls everywhere, but some foods are less obvious when it comes to potential dangers. They’re not necessarily bad in an obvious way, but there are circumstances that can make them dangerous, especially when you overindulge.
10. Too Many Brazil Nuts Can Give You Selenium Poisoning
Do you enjoy mixed nuts? At Christmas, you can find the most robust mixtures available and they include things like walnuts, hazelnuts, and the ever-elusive Brazil nut. In North America, the Brazil nut isn’t unknown, but it’s not super popular, either. They’re larger than the average nut and you can often find a weird-tasting one in a mix. But they’re worth avoiding in large numbers.
For one, you may have heard that Brazil nuts are actually radioactive. That’s true, thanks to the roots absorbing radium in larger doses than you’re likely to find in most foods. But the radioactivity isn’t Incredible Hulk level so, again, moderation is the key. Except that’s not the only reason to avoid large amounts of Brazil nuts. You need to be wary of the selenium.
One ounce of Brazil nuts, or about 8 nuts in total, contains 777% of the daily recommended amount of selenium. So that math on that means you should probably not eat more than one nut a day, really, but you’re likely safe at that one-ounce mark.
Too much selenium causes selenosis. Symptoms of selenosis include nausea, rashes, bad breath, and diarrhea. At high enough levels you’re looking at kidney failure, cardiac arrest, and death.
9. Eating Too Much Shellfish Infected With Domoic Acid Can Cause Brain Damage
If you ever go to a buffet that does crab legs you’ll know just how much people love shellfish. Literal fights break out over them and that’s kind of horrifying. Crab and lobster are considered some of the finest of foods, at least for folks who like that sort of thing, and they will indulge whenever possible.
The problem with shellfish is that, like any food from the sea, the medium in which they live can be suspect. Regular fish can have mercury or microplastics but shellfish can present another danger you’re probably less familiar with: Amnesic Shellfish Poisoning.
Certain kinds of algae can get into your clams and crabs and start producing domoic acid. The clam eats the algae and keeps the domoic acid in its body until it’s caught, cooked, and served to you. Crabs can get it by eating the clams.
As the name suggests, when you get infected by the domoic acid, you can develop short-term memory problems. Vomiting, diarrhea, confusion, and dizziness can develop in 24 to 48 hours. If you consume enough of the infected shellfish, you can permanently lose your short-term memory. Death is also possible.
Moderate consumption of razor clams and oysters shouldn’t be a problem and these algae are pretty much always in the water. But if conditions are right and algae blooms get severe, then clams, oysters, and crabs can potentially take on much higher levels and become more dangerous, especially for those who eat a lot.
In 2016, these algae blooms were so bad that a huge chunk of the shellfish industry in Maine had to be shut down entirely because of the potential risk.
8. Eating Too Much Lean Protein Can Starve You
If you’re trying to eat right and lose weight, maybe gain muscle mass, you may be tempted to eat lean protein. In general, it’s never a bad idea to eat lean protein but we’re not talking about things in general, are we? We’re talking about when you go a little overboard, and you can definitely do that with lean protein.
Too much protein without fat and carbohydrates to balance it out can cause something called rabbit starvation or salmon starvation. That kind of sad name came from some of the earliest known cases of people experiencing it when they ate little but lean protein, like rabbit, and found themselves losing weight and growing sick despite having plenty to eat.
You can’t survive on just one macronutrient, at least not well, and not forever. Protein, fat, and carbs have to all exist in balance to keep you healthy. Pure protein can provide calories but lead to nausea, weakness, low blood pressure, slow heart rate, fatigue, and more.
7. Too Much Fat Will Give You Milky Blood
Like protein, too much fat in your diet is never a good idea. There are some obvious reasons for that and it seems pretty common sense to want to avoid a full-fat diet. But do you know what happens if you eat too much fat besides, you know, gaining weight? The effect of excessive fat on the human body is actually very off-putting. It turns your blood milky white.
A man in Germany had his blood drawn after going to the hospital in 2019 complaining of a host of health problems. They couldn’t take it by normal means, which is to say with a syringe, so they had to dust off the medieval practice of bloodletting because his blood was so thick. Pictures of it show vials that appear to have a small amount of red blood in the bottom and then about three times as much milky white fluid on top. That was all fat, like when you leave a pan of bacon fat sitting out.
It turns out the man, who had various health issues already, had an incredibly high amount of triglycerides, a type of fat, in his blood. 150 mg/dL of triglycerides is normal and 500 mg/dL is high. This man had 14,000 mg/dL. His heart was essentially pushing butter through his veins.
Even if you just have a heavily fatty meal before having blood drawn, your plasma triglyceride levels can be high for hours causing your blood to take on that milky hue.
6. Pine Nuts Can Cause A Bitter, Metallic Taste That Lasts For Weeks
Pine nuts are not typically a nut most of us snack on, but some people do. They’re also very common in pesto. Like our friend the Brazil nut, you want to be careful with pine nuts and not go overboard with them lest you face the scourge known as pine mouth.
It’s not every pine nut that can cause pine mouth, which is good. But it’s also unclear which pine nuts cause it or why. But if you eat enough, you may endure what is not deadly but entirely awful, nonetheless.
Between 12 and 48 hours after you eat the nuts, you will start to experience an inexplicable metallic taste in your mouth. People have likened it to sucking on some pennies and then spitting them out. That penny aftertaste is what is in your mouth all day every day for as much as two weeks or more.
5. Too Many Carbs Can Cause Drunkenness With Auto Brewery Syndrome
We saw what happens to some people with too much protein or too much fat so it seems only reasonable to look at carbs now. Not everyone who indulges in pasta and bread is going to have this problem but for an unlucky few auto-brewery syndrome is a real problem.
The condition is rare so there’s a very small chance you or anyone you know has it. If you do have it, your stomach essentially works as a fermentation tank so that starches and sugars, what we call carbohydrates, dropped into it are converted into alcohol right inside of you. The more you consume the worse it would get.
Some people who suffer from the condition have been arrested for drunk driving because they didn’t even know they had it, and tests later confirmed this to be the case.
4. Ramen Noodles Are Linked to Cardiometabolic Syndrome
In 2022 the human race consumed over 121 billion servings of ramen. That’s a heck of a number. People like ramen because you can make it even if you only have a kettle handle, it takes about five minutes tops, and it’s dirt cheap. A lot is going for it. But there are some downsides.
Aside from not having a ton of nutritional value and almost all the salt you need in a day in a single serving, some serious health issues can be caused by excess ramen consumption.
Eating ramen two or more times a week has been linked to cardiometabolic syndrome. That, in turn, puts you on track to worse things like diabetes, heart disease, and stroke. Women also seem to be at a greater risk than men so keep that in mind next time you put the kettle on to have a quick noodle lunch.
3. Eating Lychee On An Empty Stomach Could Be Fatal
Lychee still hasn’t caught on very well in North America but you can still find them at many markets, especially Asian ones. These unassuming fruits are kind of grape-like once you peel them and fairly mild in flavor. Because they’re small, you could potentially eat a lot of them in a sitting, but you don’t want to do that on an already empty stomach.
For decades, children in a region of India were getting sick and dying and no one could figure out why. The reason, it seems, is lychee. But not just lychee, lychee on an empty stomach. That’s why it was hard to pin down, because some people could eat them and be fine.
Lychee produces compounds that lower blood sugar. If you eat too many on an empty stomach with already low blood sugar, then your blood glucose can drop dangerously low to the point of being fatal. Those afflicted suffered brain swelling and seizures before dying.
2. Eating Raw Flour Is the Real Danger in Raw Cookie Dough
Have you ever heard that it’s bad to eat raw cookie dough? And have you also ever heard that it’s not bad because most raw eggs aren’t going to be infected with salmonella so the cookie dough is safe if it’s eggless? Those are two pretty common things you’ll find online. But eggs were barely ever the problem.
Raw eggs may have bacteria that make cookie dough dangerous but it’s actually the raw flour you need to be worried about. This flies in the face of most of baking history as we tend to dust our cutting boards with flour, lick the batter off of spoons, and even make homemade Play-Doh for kids with the stuff.
Wheat can be contaminated with E. coli and salmonella while it’s still in the field. It gets dried out and ground into flour and then bagged, bought, and placed in your kitchen where not a single thing has been done to kill the bacteria that are all over it.
The CDC has tracked outbreaks linked to flour in 2023, 2021, 2019, and 2016. Flour and baking mixes are recalled when they’re found to be contaminated but it has such a long shelf life people can have them for years without knowing.
1. You Can Overdose On Carrot Juice
There are a handful of things in the world that you can overdose on and the result is tragic. Drugs, of all kinds, are the most obvious. Too many lives are lost every year due to accidental and intentional overdoses.
There are also some things you can overdose on that you never in a million years would have believed you could overdose on and carrot juice has to be near the top of that list.
As with everything on this list, it’s not the carrot juice in and of itself that’s dangerous, it’s just some of what you’ll find in the carrot juice. In this case, it’s beta-carotene. The pigment that makes carrots orange (and other fruits and vegetables as well) is converted into vitamin A inside your body. It’s also not something you need too much of.
In 1974, a man in England died from having too much carrot juice. The 48-year-old, called a “health food enthusiast” was drinking a gallon of carrot juice per day and had decided that it might also be a good idea to take 70 million units of vitamin A over 10 days. His corpse was apparently bright yellow, and he was suffering cirrhosis of the liver as it was unable to process all the carrot juice.
Others who have survived this kind of carrot overload still have yellow skin as it’s an unavoidable side effect, but it will go away in time if you cut back.