- That was bad.
MIKE DROLET: It's a marketing tour de force that's
as simple as it is dangerous--
eat a chip.
- Oh, God.
MIKE DROLET: Suffer, post reaction online,
and then watch the views multiply.
- Milk, hurry up!
MIKE DROLET: The company that created the One Chip Challenge
offers a warning that its chip is intended
for adult consumption, but anybody in the US and Canada
can legally buy it.
MICHAEL RIEDER: This is like deliberately
saying, let's find different ways for these kids
to hurt themselves.
MIKE DROLET: And now the family of a 14-year-old boy
outside of Boston is blaming the chip challenge for his death.
Harris Wolobah reportedly was sent home
after eating a chip at school and then
died hours later in hospital.
While autopsy results are still pending,
the medical community is using Wolobah's case as a warning
that extreme spice can be dangerous.
MICHAEL RIEDER: What it does is it actually
activates a receptor that makes you
think you have intense pain.
So it causes intense pain, but it also is irritant.
So it can cause irritation, and it can cause things like it
can disrupt the esophagus.
MIKE DROLET: Capsaicin is what gives the chip bite.
It's an extract from peppers that Health
Canada lists as an animal repellent
since it's used in bear spray.
It can be consumed, but there's a risk.
The two peppers that are used in the chip are rated so hot,
they make a jalapeno pepper seem positively mild.
MATT DAMON: [LAUGHS] What's happening to my body?
MIKE DROLET: There's no shortage of TV shows
that use risk to draw viewers.
- [COUGHS]
MIKE DROLET: And those in turn have helped
fuel interest in increasingly dangerous challenges
that act as clickbait.
ANABEL QUAN-HAASE: There's a lot of room
for experimentation for having fun, for taking risks.
So often, it doesn't feel totally real, right?
Like, it doesn't feel like it's necessarily the real world,
but it-- rather, it's kind of like a media
representation of the world.
So that often makes risk taking a bit easier.
MIKE DROLET: The challenge trend is
proving difficult to control.
And what makes it most worrisome,
there's always another challenge on the horizon.
Mike Drolet, Global News Toronto.