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Dangerous food, part 1 - Glutinous rice cakes (mochi)

A bummer of a way to start the new year... 4 die choking on mochi rice cakes in Japan

Mochi (rice cake) is made from pounding cooked glutinous rice into a dense solid that dries as hard as a rock. It's usually served re-heated, so it becomes a super hot, dense mass that stretches like melted cheese. It's also served in a clear broth soup called o-zoni where the mochi soaks up water and becomes a pastey glue like substance. It's really not bad, and still safer to eat than the poisonous blowfish Fugu.

Mochi is a traditional food for the New Years Holiday food in Japan. (Shh, don't tell Jack Kevorkian...)


4 die choking on mochi rice cakes on Monday, Tuesday; others ill

Wednesday, January 3, 2007

TOKYO - Four men choked to death on Monday and Tuesday in Tokyo, Niigata and Ibaraki prefectures, and seven others in the capital became critically ill after choking on mochi rice cakes, a traditional New Year's food in Japan, police and firefighters said.

A 68-year-old man in Tokyo's Fuchu and a 76-year-old man in the capital's Sumida Ward died Tuesday after choking on the rice cakes, while a 74-year-old man in Ojiya, Niigata Prefecture, and an 80-year-old man in Chikusei, Ibaraki Prefecture, died likewise on Monday, they said. In Tokyo, a total of 16 people ranging in age from 65 to 91 were hospitalized due to choking on rice cakes on Monday and Tuesday, and two of them died and seven lost consciousness and were in a serious condition, the Tokyo Fire Department said.


Posted by John Seaman on January 4, 2007 2:12 PM |

Comments

With regard to choking, I would like to e-mail you an article to publish on the Heimlich Maneuver and how people can save their own life from food choking. Please give me an email address so that I can attach the article. My mother died of food choking and I would like to spare other families the tragecy of a death in time for the Shougatsu season so that maybe fewer people will die on that holiday from food choking. Best regards, KWMF

Thanks for the comment. Here's a link on WebMD for choking first aid.
http://firstaid.webmd.com/choking_treatment_firstaid.htm

Posted by: Katherine Wyllie Mansoor Fuji | August 1, 2007 10:55 PM

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