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On a Friday at Doherty Memorial High School in Worcester, Massachusetts, 14-year-old Harris Wolobah was handed a small coffin-shaped box, emblazoned with a skull and snake, that contains a single spicy tortilla chip called the One Chip Challenge.
Paqui, a Hershey company-owned brand that makes the chip, doesn't have a measurement for how spicy its product is or a Scoville Heat Unit (SHU) rating that shows the level of pungency of a pepper.
But the chip is made with the Carolina Reaper and Naga Viper peppers, which are rated at about 1.6 million and 1.4 million SHU, respectively. Jalapeno peppers, in comparison, range from 2,500 to 8,000 SHU.
The "challenge" is simple: Eat the whole chip in one sitting, and see how long you can last without desperately grabbing a glass of milk or water.
Health experts have already warned about the potential side effects of participating in the One Chip Challenge: vomiting, stomach pain, difficulty breathing, and even cardiac arrest. But Wolobah, like so many others, most likely either had no clue about the warnings or brushed it off.
Plus, countless others have already tried the challenge and shared their experience on YouTube. Pain quickly ensues but the participants seemed to come out of it okay.
When Wolobah ate the chip, the sophomore must have had an especially adverse reaction. According to Harris's mother, Lois Wolobah, he fainted and was sent to the nurse's office that day.
"When I went there, he was lying down and I said, 'What was the chip you ate?'" his mother told WBZ TV. Wolobah showed his mom the Paqui brand One Chip Challenge. His father, Amos, said his son didn't have any pre-existing condition, at least to his knowledge, he said.
Wolobah died in his home hours later. Autopsy results have not yet been released, and the family and Hershey did not respond to a request for comment. But the Wolobahs are pointing the blame squarely at the One Chip Challenge.
Paqui in response said in a statement that it's working with retailers to "remove the product from shelves."
It's unclear if the heat had anything to do with Wolobah's death, but the challenge's mere existence points to a uniquely American fascination with spice.
At restaurants, sweat-inducing heat is almost expected on the menu. In the aisles of grocery stores, shoppers can choose from a dizzying selection of hot sauces. And in South Carolina, a farm is singlehandedly responsible for developing one of the hottest peppers ever eaten by mankind. The farm recently just topped its own record with a pepper rated at more than 2 million Scoville Heat Units.
THAT FARM WILL BE JOINING US AT ZESTFEST...
THERE CAN BE RISKS FOR SOME SO, WHEN YOU COME TO ZESTFEST, PLEASE SAMPLE ALL THE PRODUCTS RESPONSIBLY
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