The Surprising Reason These Foods Send People To The Emergency Room

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There are certain dangers inherent to cooking that we're all aware of — the usual nicks from careless knife work, the minor burns from hot pans and spattering oil, and the inevitable shaving of the knuckles when using a mandolin. While none of these are especially pleasant to endure, they aren't typically injuries that will land you in the emergency room. But surprisingly, there are plenty of seemingly innocuous foods and food preparation techniques that will land you in the emergency room. And it turns out that some of our favorite meals are some of the most dangerous. 

Like to grill? Both frozen hamburger patties and cooked hamburger patties can cause injury for very different reasons. What about pizza? Even if you're not making it yourself there are numerous ways it can hurt you, and no, it's not just the usual roof-of-the-mouth burn. 

And those aren't the only things you need to worry about — from bagels to canned goods to cinnamon, here are the surprising reasons these foods could send you to the ER.

Say it isn't so! The heavenly dairy topping we liberally add to our coffee drinks, ice cream sundaes, and, if we're being honest, spray directly into our mouths, couldn't possibly be responsible for causing bodily harm to people, could it? Well, yes and no.

It's not the actual whipped cream you have to worry about (thankfully), it's the pressurized canister that dispenses it. But don't go throwing away your grocery store spray cans just yet — the disposable containers aren't the problem. It's the professional grade reusable canisters you have to worry about — think barista quality — because of their potential to explode.

In June 2017, Rebecca Burger, a French fitness model, died when the canister she was using exploded and hit her in the chest, which lead to cardiac arrest. Though she is thought to be the first person to die from the defective product, she definitely wasn't the first to sustain injuries. The Daily News reports that since 2010, five dozen injuries have occurred due to exploding devices including broken ribs, broken teeth, tinnitus, and the loss of an eye. Shortly following reports of Burger's death, another women was injured when the canister she was using exploded and hit her in the leg. "I shake the bottle, and — boom — it explodes," she said. "It was terrible, the lid was gone and the bottle was lodged in the ceiling. If I had taken that to the head, I would have been finished."

Now that you've successfully separated the frozen hamburger patties without stabbing yourself, you can let your guard down, right? Not so fast — it turns out that cooked burgers have the potential to injure you, too, and this time, it has nothing to do with negligence or impatience.

Before you throw your burgers on the grill, do you do the right thing and clean the grates with your trusty wire brush? If so, doing the right thing is exactly what can get you into trouble in this case. Those wire bristles can detach from the brush and stick to the grates, and when your patty hits the grill, the bristles can adhere to the meat. Next stop: your mouth, throat, and in the worst cases, your stomach and intestines. According to a study published in 2016, an estimated 1698 emergency room visits occurred between 2002 to 2014 due to wire bristles in grilled food, most commonly due to oral cavity injury.

Is anyone else crossing hamburgers off their cookout list?

In this day and age, with all the fancy electric can openers and gadgets out there, you'd think opening a can of beans would be a breeze. But sometimes those lids prove to be so stubborn you just want to throw the whole can out the window. And based on these findings by Nottingham University, you're not the only one struggling.

Researchers investigated the potential dangers of badly designed packaging, and the results were harrowing when it came to canned foods. According to the study "more than 60,000 people require hospital treatment each year after injuring themselves opening difficult packaging." Of those, almost 9000 people (13.8 percent) cut themselves while opening cans of corned beef, while other canned foods were responsible for 17,671 (26 percent) injuries requiring hospital treatment. Shockingly, researchers even found instances of people who had cut off their fingers completely in an attempt to cut a can in half with a knife. Now that's one stubborn can of corned beef. 

Energy drinks might seem like a quick and easy way to give yourself a little boost, but there is such a thing as too much of a good thing...

According to a report by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, emergency room visits related to caffeinated energy drinks doubled from 2007 to 2011, skyrocketing from 10,068 visits to 20,783 visits, respectively. And it's not just those who double down on the jolt by combining it with drugs or alcohol — 60 percent of those seeking medical attention had consumed the drink by itself and experienced adverse reactions like muscle tremors, seizures, and rapid heartbeat. Those who combined the energy drink with alcohol made up 13 percent of patients, while 27 percent had combined it with prescription drugs. 

In 2016, a McDonald's latte, a large Mountain Dew, and a 16-ounce energy drink proved to be a lethal combination for one 16-year-old in South Carolina, who collapsed after consuming the staggering amount of caffeine in the span of two hours. Ultimately, "caffeine-induced cardiac event causing a probable arrhythmia" was listed as the cause of his death.

Everyone's favorite toast topper is among the long list of foods that will probably send us to the emergency room for a serious hand injury. Yes, "avocado hand" is a real thing, and it occurs when we mishandle the fruit. 

Think about it: When you're cutting open an avocado, do you keep it on the cutting board, or do you stab at it with a sharp knife while you hold it in the palm of your hand? We all know the answer to that one. Then, once it's cut in half, you probably whack at the pit with the knife, also while holding the avocado in your hand. And lastly, you probably slice the fruit into sections down to the peel — you guessed it — while holding it in your hand. All of these actions can result in cuts and stab wounds to the hand, or worst case, do enough damage to your nerves and tendons that surgery is required. 

Basically, every time you eat an avocado-topped bagel and don't land in the ER, you should consider yourself lucky.

So you've sworn off Flamin' Hot Cheetos due to the gastritis potential, but you're still chowing down on hot chili peppers without a care in the world. What could go wrong? If you're really unlucky, a lot...

Take the unfortunate eating contest participant who ate a burger topped with ghost pepper puree — whose Scoville rating comes in at a jaw-dropping 1 million heat units — and then vomited so profusely that he tore a hole in his esophagus. The condition, known as Boerhaave syndrome, is rare but has a high mortality rate, and required life-saving emergency surgery and a 23-day stay in the hospital.

Another insanely hot pepper, the Carolina Reaper, is responsible for sending a man to the ER after experiencing "intense neck pain and headaches that would last only a few seconds but that continued over the next several days." The condition, known as "thunderclap headaches," is thought to have been brought on from the consumption of the super spicy pepper, and is caused by reversible cerebral vasoconstriction syndrome, or in layman's terms, "temporarily constricted arteries in the brain." 

Apparently we can cross all the hot peppers of our lists of things to eat, along with avocados, burgers, and maybe worst of all, pizza.