Sometimes the resulting junk-food-icide is quick, sometimes it’s slow, and sometimes it’s William S. Burroughs-levels of weird, which is what we’ll be talking about today. So without further ado, here are the top 10 cases of people who would still be alive today if not for that accursed abomination of nature known as “food.”
10. Natasha Harris Overdoses On Coke
Natasha Harris earned her tragically misleading epitaph after she died from a heart attack in 2010. The reason I say “misleading,” is because her death was actually brought on by Coca-Cola. Two gallons of the stuff to be exact, which is what Harris consumed every day during the last couple of years leading to her death.
If you’ve ever wondered what happens to a person who ingests 2 pounds of sugar and 1 gram of pure caffeine a day, it doesn’t exactly give them super speedster powers like in Futurama. What it does do is enlarge your liver with fat deposits, cause arrhythmia and, oh yeah, eventually explode your heart. Then again, so will about any other liquid if you drink 2 gallons of it per day, so take this for whatever it’s worth.
9. Adam Deeley Lets Himself Eat (Cup)Cakes
They say that college is a time to let yourself go crazy and try new and exciting things, which is why it’s such a shame that Adam Deeley had to leave this world by choking on cupcakes. The incident occurred in 2008 when Deeley, a graphic design student from Wales, decided to join an impromptu bar competition to see how many cupcakes he could fit into his mouth, because Wales really is as dreary and boring as we’ve always suspected.
However, reality proved once more that it and television have apparently not been on speaking terms for some time now because, rather than his cheeks expanding in a humorous fashion like some cartoon hamster, Deeley choked on the mini-cakes, and suffered a fatal heart attack. And because we know you’re curious: the number of cupcakes it takes to kill a person is 5.
8. Ricky Guest-Binns Is No Iron Chef
Allan Glenny of Blackpool, UK, is a man who knows what he likes, and what he likes is cheesy fries. Sadly, his access to his favorite artery-stuffer is probably heavily limited nowadays, seeing as he’s serving a 3-year sentence for manslaughter, after killing one Ricky Guest-Binns.
How do all of these facts and names fit together, you ask? Simple: in May of 2012, Glenny killed Guest-Binns with a single punch, after starting a fight in a fast-food joint because their cook did not melt the cheese “correctly” on his order of cheesy fries.
That’s right – one punch. Also, that’s right #2 – over incorrectly melted cheese, which might explain the new health slogan coming to the UK next year: “An apple a day keeps unwanted attention in the prison shower away.”
7. Scott Martins Does An Anti-Atkins
Ever since the UK-born Scott Martins was a child, all he would eat were carb-heavy things like baked beans and toast, a diet which he kept for about 20 years. It’s very possible that this condition was caused by an undiagnosed illness, like maybe “being a kid and having way-too-forgiving parents.” In any case, what killed Scott in the end was no mystery: After beating the crap out of his liver, developing hepatitis, and thoroughly destroying his blood’s ability to clot, Martin bled out through his gums during an emergency dental procedure.
This is admittedly a very sad story, but the good news is that at least now whenever your kids refuse to eat their vegetables, you can just show them this article and really emphasize the “bleeding out through the gums” part.
6. Vincent Smith’s Death Was Such a Sweet Sorrow
In 2009, Vincent Smith Jr. was working in a Camden chocolate factory (which may or may not have been owned by a man named Willy or Charlie) when he fell from an 8-foot-high platform, into an open vat of hot chocolate. If this was a comic book, he would have survived and emerged from it changed, no longer the man he was before, now reborn as the villainous Choco-Man, which totally isn’t a racist joke, no matter what our Legal Department says.
In real life though, all Smith did was die from a blow to the head, which frankly would have been an awesome addition to the 2005 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory movie.
5. IHOP Could Have Saved Some Guy’s Life
Pancakes are a little bit like pizza or sex. Even if they’re not good, they’re still good, you know? That’s why it’s perfectly understandable that a certain 19-year-old from the United States would continue to chow down on his own batch of delicious cakes of the pan variety, even after realizing they tasted like “rubbing alcohol.” What was initially less clear however, is why that same person would suddenly drop dead, after his lungs and larynx filled with mucus. Luckily, the autopsy soon answered that question.
According to a paper from the Medical University of South Carolina, the unnamed teenager suffered a severe allergic reaction to a pancake mix, which had gone moldy in his cupboard. Normally that would be enough to cause a country-wide panic and recalls not seen since Gilbert Gottfried’s Christmas Special CD, if it wasn’t for the fact that the mix in question was over 2 years past its expiration date. So it turns out that those things are a bit more than just polite suggestions. Go figure.
4. Noah Akers Gets Killed By A Hot Dog Before Diabetes Could Get Him
We joke around a lot here on TopTenz, but that’s just because we’re trying to put a less-depressing spin on the inevitable fact that we are all going to die. If you’re lucky, it will be when you’re 90 and surrounded by your loving family. If, however, you’ve spent your past life putting laxatives in baby formulas, chances are you will choke, in public, on a whipped cream-covered hot dog at the ripe old age of 13, which is exactly what happened to Noah Akers of San Pedro, in 2010.
But why was this unfortunate young man’s last meal such a strange combination of ground up pig lips and dessert toppings, you ask? Well, it was for a contest to win a candy bar, because the people behind this contest hate children and really wanted to kill some of them off. Only in this case, choking got to Noah before diabetes and childhood obesity could (though in their defense, those two can’t run very fast.)
3. What Would Savannah Hardin do for a Klondike Bar? Die of Dehydration.
OK, last dead kid story, we promise.
So, childhood obesity. It’s a serious problem nowadays, and there are many theories out there about how to solve it. Some say we should limit the kids’ access to junk food, while others think we have to let parents and schools educate children about proper nutrition. The wrong way to go about it, shocking as it may sound, is making kids run for 3 hours straight until they die from dehydration, which sadly is what happened to 9-year-old Savannah, after eating a candy bar and then lying about it.
The girl’s grandmother and stepmother were charged with murder, after making Savannah run nonstop for hours to punish her for craving sugar like some damned … kid or something. The mini-marathon eventually caused her to dehydrate and her sodium levels to drop, a condition which is known to even threaten the lives of professional runners. Way to prove the wicked stepmother stereotype right, Mrs. Hardin. Bang-up job.
2. Jeff Munro Walks Into a Psychiatric Unit, Gets Beaten To Death Over A Bag of Chips.
We said no more dead kid stories. We didn’t say anything about the entries getting any less depressing.
Jeff Munro, who died in 2012, was a simple, small man who only wanted one thing in life – to dance. Sadly, the universe had other plans for him, plans which it apparently formulated after watching an Oz marathon. After getting addicted to meth, Munro landed in the infamous Toronto Don Jail, where he was transferred to the psychiatric unit after developing severe mental problems. No news story confirms it, but it’s obvious that he also had strong suicidal tendencies, which is the only explanation for why he chose to eat the potato chips belonging to his hulking and schizophrenic cellmate, who promptly beat Munro to death over the infraction.
Uhm … The Aristocrats?
1. Twinkies Really Don’t Go Well With Milk … Or Moscone
By now you’ve undoubtedly heard about the “Twinkie defense,” but do you know what it really is? It’s something about a guy becoming crazy after eating nothing but Twinkies, killing two people, and then being found not guilty of the crime, right? Well, no, obviously. The world is an evil and crazy place, but it’s not that crazy. However, the real story of the “Twinkie defense” is.
San Francisco Mayor George Moscone, and Supervisor Harvey Milk, were both killed on November 27 1978 by Dan White, because the latter really wanted his old job back (nothing spruces up a resume like “double homicide.”) The ensuing White trial was one of the biggest media frenzies in history, during which time newspapers first reported on what came to be known as the “Twinkie defense”. White’s attorneys argued that their client wasn’t entirely responsible for his crime because he was depressed, as evidenced by the fact that he ate nothing but junk food before the murder. So, no, it wasn’t the fact that junk food MADE White crazy. It was being crazy that made White eat junk food, which was also enough to get him off with a voluntary manslaughter conviction, for which he served about five years in prison.
The story eventually got twisted around, but the original version remains much more interesting. Not just because a guy got five years for killing two people, but also because, at some point in history, a man stood up in court and said with a straight face: “My client ate Twinkies, your honor. What further proof you need that he’s dangerously banana-splits insane-o-crazy?”
