I know why i puked!

[SoVerySorry]

Okay so... the week leading up to my death date, I bought a HUGE bag of M&M candies. It was 10 dollars.

I destroyed the bag and bought another one. I was on and off nauseated that week, after chewing on the candies all week. I learned of something called Theobromine Poisoning which you can consider "Chocolate Poisoning"

The amount of chocolate I was eating was ridiculous! Do you think this could've been the case?

Here is the link to a Wiki about it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theobromine_poisoning

[xxsophiaxx]

I believe that this condition is very rare in humans, much more common in other animals (hence why you can't give chocoloate to your pets). However, if you really were eating as much chocolate as you say you were, and are not exaggerating, then this very well could've been the case! In general, I'd say it's best to follow the serving sizes on most food packages, especially "junk foods". I guess you've learned your lesson now though ;-)

[jkl81]

It's possible. To find out if you were close to toxic doses you need to see if the amount of M&Ms you consumed was at or close to the human TDlo (lowest toxic dose) in the article you linked. Here it was 26mg/kg. It would involve some relatively straightforward calculation where we compare your body weight in KG to how many milligrams of M&Ms you consumed. Furthermore you'd need to figure out how much %by weight of the M&Ms was theobromine. Even at that, you're still leaving out a critical variable, maybe two, the window of time in which you consumed said chocolate and the rate at which your body eliminates theobromine. The result would be a differential equation that would be kind of complicated. I think you could probably do some cruder calculations to determine if it was just way too much theobromine or if you are barking up the wrong tree with this. I say you could do the crude easy calculations assuming nothing was eliminated and it still might not be enough to cause you any problems. For example, since we know that the toxic dose is 26 mg/kg at any time, lets assume you weigh 45 kg (100lbs) you'd need to have ingested at least 1170 mg of thebromine. Lets assume your M&Ms contained 1.4% tb by weight and that your $10 bag was 2.5 lbs. If you ate the whole bag at one sitting you might have as much theobromine as 15820mg which is well over the toxic dose. You didn't do that though, you did it over a week you said, so your dose is likely quite a lot less than that. My conclusion is that you might be right to suspect it as a problem but I think it's more likely that it was just a little much for you as a result of all the components and you were probably not truly poisoned. However, I always get a little queasy if I eat stuff like that in more than just moderation, so maybe use a little more moderation next time. Hope you found it somewhat interesting. An ancient alchemist said that all things are poison and poison is in all things, the difference is in the dose, and I suggest that you are right in assuming that may apply even to chocolate, but normal moderate quantities are not going to make you sick.

[gumdropper1]

I doubt you had chocolate poisoning. The calculations by jkl are good ones. Take it easy on the chocolate. It probably won't cause vomiting, but it will make you fat and wreck your teeth.

[SoVerySorry]

I was doing research. This is it per 200 Calorie serving.

Candies, MASTERFOODS USA, M&M's Milk Chocolate CandiesTheobromine: 58mg

This is what the bag said on the back

Serving Size 42 G
Servings Per Container 25
CALORIES 220


I'm not good at math at all... lemme see...

220 (Calories) *25 (servings) is... 5500 calories in the whole bag.

5500/200 is... 27.5 (theobromine per calorie servings)

27.5 * 58 (theobromine) is... 1595... so there is 1595mg Theobromine in the bag total?

I ate each bag in 3 separate days. (both gone in 6 days; rough estimate)

25 servings split into 3 days is... 7.6?


1595/7.6 is... 209.86mg of Theobromine a day for a week??


I don't know what the half life of it is, but what I do know is that I'm not eating chocolate in excess ever again. I just bought 2 bags of Lindt Lindor Chocolates. Time to give them to my aunt haha.

Nope. I'm never eating more than 100 calories of chocolate in a week ever again. Now it says it is commonly found in Tea as well. I just bought 3 5$ packs of Tea. Byebye 15 dollars


Great. New obsession

[SoVerySorry]

I think I had a reaction, but not a like... scary "must go to ER" reaction. I did have Diarrhea and did Vomit (only once). Oh! And I was urinating 3 times a day which is more than what I was use too.

[cycle]

I think it's more likely that all of the sugar in the m&ms made you sick, rather than the chocolate. That, or the dye in foods like that can have artificial sweetener that can give you diarrhea. Everything in moderation, and you'll be just fine.

you only pee 3x a day??? That should not be in moderation, I think you need to drink more water!!

[jkl81]

I'm not sure where you're getting the amount of theobromine per calorie serving. Refined chocolate tends to have 1.2-1.4% on a weight basis, so if a serving is 42g then (42* .012) yields the amount of grams of theobromine in a serving. Don't forget to multiply the result by 1000 to get milligrams. In this case=504 mg in a serving? Seems like a lot even then but well below you minimum toxic dose. may have made a math error in there somewhere.

[Grace47]

I think that much of any candy would make you sick. That's a lot of candy in three days is a lot of candy. Little kids often get sick on candy around Halloween and other candy filled events. I would just take it easier on the candy. I don't know how much tea you would have to drink to actually get sick on it, but my dad and his farm workers would drink well over a gallon of tea a day while putting up hay in the summer and none of them ever got sick. In other words, I don't think you have anything to worry about with tea.

[gumdropper1]

Once you had 1595 mg in the bag, I don't know why you divided by 7.6. You ate the bag over 3 days, so 1595/3 = 532 mg per day. The Wikipedia article you cited claims the low-end toxic dose for a human is 26 mg/kg. 532/20 = 20.46. Obviously you weigh more than 20 kg. So I don't think the chocolate is necessarily to blame. I would eat less though anyway.

Doug

[SoVerySorry]

I got the Theobromine from some Theobromine site that lists the levels in certain candies.

The Theobromine levels were from 200 calorie servings
If the bag has 25 servings, and each serving is 220 calories... so I multiplied that to get the total amount of calories the bag. I divided the amount of calories by 200 (The Theobromine 200 calorie bench) which gave me 1598 per bag (which is a huge bag)


I ... woah I messed up somewhere. I told you I wasn't good at math

So about 500+ a day for 6 days? Remember, not in a single serving, but the amount I ate each day.




I'm just trying to find a cause for my emetic episode; kinda freakin me out.