The Bavarian Ministry for Health and Food Safety has banned a crisp that is so spicy it has caused some children and teenagers to suffer from health problems after they have eaten it.

Bavaria bans hot chips used for challenge

Internet challenges can be everything from innocuous to inadvisable or fatal. The most recent case of a challenge taking TikTok and the wider internet by storm falls in the latter categories.

So inadvisable is eating a single, hot chip that the Ministry for Health and Food Safety in Bavaria has decided to ban the food, which can be bought online and delivered within the EU. Bavaria follows Baden-Württemberg, where the chip was also banned this week.

Produced by the company “Hot Chip Challenge”, the crisp contains what was the hottest chilli in the world until 2023, the Carolina Reaper, which produces a burn which can be felt for between 10 and 20 minutes after the crisp is eaten. On the Scoville scale, a Carolina Reaper comes in at 200 times hotter than a Jalapeño.

The company sells a single crisp for 9,90 euros and encourages buyers to upload a video of themselves eating the crisp to take part in the “Hot Chip Challenge” and win a case for their mobile phone.

Children and teenagers in hospital after internet chilli challenge

The ban comes after the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment released a warning for the extremely spicy crisps back in September 2023, the same month that a 14-year-old boy in the United States died shortly after doing a separate but similar challenge, the "One Chip Challenge". The "One Chip Challenge" product is produced by the US company Paqui and is predominantly sold in the States.

Fortunately, there have been no fatalities in Germany related to the Hot Chip Challenge, though according to police, a number of children at a school in Dortmund had to go to hospital after taking part.

In its warning, the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment said that some consumers had experienced irritation of mucous membranes, nausea, vomiting and high blood pressure.

Thumb image credit: Lightspruch / Shutterstock.com