First, let's spoil this tale right away by telling you the 19-year-old man in Virginia who downed a quart of soy sauce on a dare survived.
It's a happy ending of sorts. But the guy had a close call. And you definitely don't want to try it.
While there's been quite a debate lately about whether the salt in the modern American diet is risky, there's no question that a massive amount of salt ingested quickly can lead to death.
In fact, suicide by soy sauce is not unknown in Asia. A 2011 report in theJournal of Forensic and Legal Medicine describes the case of a 55-year-old woman diagnosed with depression. She died after drinking "a large quantity of shoyu (Japanese soy sauce)," doctors wrote.
Back in the early '90s, Mayo Clinic doctors reported on a 41-year-old man who died after swallowing a salty gargling solution. That case and a look at the medical literature up to that point led them to caution other doctors about using salty water to induce vomiting.
A salt dose ranging from 0.75 grams to 3 grams per kilogram of body weight can kill someone. A tablespoon of salt weighs about 15 grams, in case you're wondering.
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