Mashed Potato Mystery

I was given a 'medical question of the week' from one of my younger brothers - they always come up with the most hilarious and thought provoking medical questions like - I know that hooking up an IV of tomato juice would kill me....but why?

So this week's question: If someone were to eat an entire dump-truck load o mashed postatoes, what would they die of?

There's a few variables to think about here.

If you were to eat them all at once as fast as you could....you would either rupture your stomach, and die from sepsis as your insides got infected with stomach goo, or you would puke so much that you would lose too many electrolytes and go crazy and die.

If you were to eat them slowly over a long time you might become diabetic from all the simple sugars and then die slowly from small vessel complications like blindness, kidney disease and amputations, or die quickly from a type of high blood sugar crisis (DKA or HONK for my fellow meddies) where you get hmm...stomach pain, sweaty, hyperventilate, burn out your heart and die. Or you might get really high cholesterol from all the butter in those yummy potatoes and get heart disease or stroke and die from plaques blocking off your arteries. Or maybe even scurvy from only eating potatoes and nothing else, that would be kinda interesting.

I'd also be inclined to think you might die of boredom from only having mashed potatoes and never getting yummy thai noodles, indian curries, luscious green salads and bbq'ed meats!!!

I think we can all see that for a multidude of reasons - you should not eat a truckload of potatoes Bob. :)

Lots of love
Pamela