A 47-year-old man has spent 23 days recovering in hospital after he ate a burger topped with ‘ghost pepper puree’ during an eating contest, according to the Journal of Emergency Medicine.
Ghost peppers are among the hottest chillis in the world. All chillis you might eat have what’s called a Scoville rating – which gives you an idea of how spicy the chilli will be.
A jalapeño is around has a Scoville rating around 5,000. Those punch-packing green habaneros? Somewhere between 100,000 and 350,000. The ghost chilli blows them all away with a Scoville rating of over ONE MILLION.
Apparently after eating the burger, the hapless foodie began to be sick and vomited so much he burned a hole in his oesophagus – a condition called Boerhaave syndrome.
While the study’s authors assure us that this was an unusual case, you can bet we won’t be tucking into any ‘ghost pepper puree’ any time soon!
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