Aspiring chef dies hours after making ultra-hot sauce for chilli contest

This poor chap from the UK used his own red chilies to make a deadly-hot brew of sauce.

Andrew Lee, 33, had used a bag of home-grown red chillies to make a super-hot sauce.

The forklift truck driver, who had recently passed a medical at work, dared his girlfriend's brother to eat a spoonful - then ate a plateful himself. Shortly after he had a heart attack and died.

His sister, Claire Chadbourne, 29, explained: 'They had a contest over who could make the hottest chilli sauce.

'Andrew had used chillies to make Thai dishes before but had never made anything this hot.

'My dad grew the chillies especially for Andrew. The contest was planned and he gave them to him.

www.dailymail.co.uk...

www.news.com.au...

This seems to have been a delayed reaction of sorts - I never knew super-hot chilies could actually kill you.

Apparently hotter and newer breeds of chili are being grown out there.

[edit on 29-9-2008 by mattguy404]

Lol.

I wanted to be the first to reply on this lovely piece!

So the guy, 33, a mere .. 7yrs older than me, died from a heart attack from extra hot chilli sauce? Dang! must be some hot stuff. I wonder his history with drugs, i know you're probably thinking WTF but listen. The way spicy things work is by tricking your mouth into sending a signal to your brain to release more endorphins than usual to compensate for the "burning sensation". This causes something akin to a runner's high in some people, causing them to become livelier, in a better mood, and in some people actually causes a super mild habit. You know the ones .. like this guy .. they just love the chillis!! My mother is like that, she also has to take pretty strong pain medication for a totally screwed up back. That medicine happens to work on the same system in the brain, the endorphin/reward system, and can cause the brain to stop producing endorphins on its own for a temporary time. This is called "drug withdrawal".

And here I am lieing to myself, thinking poor nutrition, poor/no sleep, dehydration, and an over-stressed cardio system all combined with mental distress wouldn't cause such a thing in a person that young. (ie; me)

But anyways, i wonder if the guy needed a fix, and his endorphins weren't firing? Thus .. they never kicked in, and he freaked out and had a heart attack? Who's got a better theory? lol .. I'd like to hear it!



edit: Oh man .. who on earth would eat chilli's during a drug withdrawl? I could only imagine the diarehea that poor fool would experience..

[edit on 9/29/2008 by runetang]

hmmmm DEATH SAUCE! Sounds yummy. Where can I buy a bottle?

My friend and me had some pizza the other night, and mixed some "death sauce" with chilli sauce. lol, we've had it before... it's extremely hot! It has a warning on the bottle, saying that anyone with heart or breathing problems, shouldn't eat it. I tried tasting some of the death sauce when it was unmixed... I covered a chip in the stuff, and basically.. I almost stopped breathing for about 10 seconds lol. It's pretty dangerous if it's undiluted!

I get hiccups from eating really hot chilli, so, this death sauce made my diaphragm spaz out like crazy. Doesn't surprise me that the guy died, if he didn't know the risks

Eh I eat chilli with habaneros in it. How much hotter can it get than that?

Originally posted by Blueracer
Eh I eat chilli with habaneros in it. How much hotter can it get than that?

The Dorset Naga has scored in a range between 900,000 and 1,600,000 HU.

www.healthdiaries.com...

Habaneros are the hottest chile peppers and rate around 200,000 - 300,000

www.thescarms.com...

How about 5 times hotter?
Owwwch.. I want the recipe.

This poor guy sounds like he took it bad though,like some jellyfish stings can be so painful as to cause cardiac arrest.

I don't believe we ought to assume this was drug related, although alcohol may have been involved. Or vioxx or some dastardly legal drug with a laundry list of side-effects.

These idiots were ingesting capsaicin at levels equivalent to those of'civilian' pepper spray. Nothing good could have come of that.

Unfortunately cardiovascular problems do occur with such chemicals, death being the most extreme reaction. This is why police are not supposed to pepper spray the morbidly obese, the elderly or people with known medical problems.

Pepper spray is mostly topical and even then it is still dangerous as it gets onto glands - these two geniuses were Ingesting the stuff that makes the pepper spray dangerous.

Sometimes people just have bad luck. On any other day this poor guy could've been fine and only suffered the usual effects of such peppers. It is a damn shame is what it is.


[edit on 30-9-2008 by TruthTellist]

I like spicy food very much, and enjoy hot peppers. However, I experienced myself that injesting a lot of habaneros and the like can cause a lot of physiological discomfort with symptoms of asthma and what not. Basiclly, you overload your nerve system (there is no actual burning per se), and I can imagine it's dangerous. Poor guy.

I was about to say.... danged Yankees... except he's from the Uk.


I've yet to loose a battle with a pepper.

I wonder if he had a massive allergic reaction to the hot sauce?

It would take a massive amount of cayenne peppers to actually kill somebody. (Hence why its used by law enforcment.) OC can and will kill somebody, especially if he\she has a underlying health reason, like acute asthma, COPD, emphysema, etc.

The guy probably fixed the ultimate hot sauce, and then preceded to kill himself with his experiment.