Eating 2kg of sweets

gareth said:

Got this from a newspaper article from a while back,
anyone know about this case? Exactly how does a person die
from eating sweets?

Normally one does not. However, 2000 g of sugar is a huge
glucose load, and some people with defective glucose
metabolism may develop fatal hyperglycemia or reactive
hypoglycemia after consuming such a large amount. Even
normal people might not be able to handle it, I suppose. I'd
guess that this is what happened here, unless there were
other ingredients in the sweets that may have been toxic.

Chocolate contains theobromine, which must be metabolized by
the liver. Human beings are quite efficient at this, and all
reasonable amounts of chocolate are easily tolerated (dogs,
in contrast, cannot handle theobromine very well, and are
easily killed by large doses of chocolate). However, a
really large amount of chocolate might overwhelm this
metabolism and produce potentially dangerous toxicity.

Two kilograms is a lot of sweets. That would be the
equivalent of 20 chocolate bars. I like chocolate, but there
are limits!

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[email hidden] (gareth) wrote in message news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

Got this from a newspaper article from a while back,
anyone know about this case? Exactly how does a person die
from eating sweets?

SWEET DEATH

A Turkish man has died after eating 2kg of sweets
following a bet with a friend. Necati Ceylan, a 45 year
old father of five, died in hospital in the southeren city
of Gaziantep after spending 3 weeks in a coma, Anatolia
news agency reported.

poi·son ( P ) Pronunciation Key (poizn)
n. A substance that causes injury, illness, or death,
especially by chemical means. Something destructive or
fatal. Chemistry & Physics. A substance that inhibits
another substance or a reaction: a catalyst poison.

tr.v. poi·soned, poi·son·ing, poi·sons To kill or harm with
poison. To put poison on or into: poisoning arrows; poisoned
the drink.

To pollute: Noxious fumes poison the air. See Synonyms at
contaminate. To have a harmful influence on; corrupt:
Jealousy poisoned their friendship. Chemistry & Physics. To
inhibit (a substance or reaction).

adj. Poisonous.

------------------------------------------------------------
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[Middle English, from Old French, from Latin pti, ptin-,
drink. See
n(a)- in Indo-European Roots.]
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poison·er n. Word History: The phrase poison potion, besides
being alliterative, also consists of doublets, that is, two
words that go back ultimately to the same source in another
language. The source for both words is Latin pti (stem form
ptin-), which meant "the act of drinking, a drink, or a
draft, as of a medicine or poison." Our word potion, which
retains the sense "dose," passed through Old French (pocion)
on its way to Middle English (pocion), first recorded in a
work composed around 1300. In Old French pocion is a learned
borrowing, one that was deliberately taken from Latin in a
form corresponding to the Latin form. Our spelling potion is
the result of a similar impulse toward Latinization; in the
late Renaissance and Enlightenment, numerous English words
that had been borrowed from Old French were respelled
according to the shape of their Latin ancestors. Pocion thus
was changed to potion on the model of Latin pti. But the
Latin word had also passed through Vulgar Latin into Old
French in the different form poison. This word meant
"beverage," "liquid dose," and also "poison beverage,
poison." The word poison is first recorded in Middle English
in a work composed around 1200.

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tox·in ( P ) Pronunciation Key (tksn)
o. A poisonous substance, especially a protein, that is
produced by living cells or organisms and is capable of
causing disease when introduced into the body tissues but
is often also capable of inducing neutralizing antibodies
or antitoxins.