Surprisingly small amount of soy sauce can actually kill you

I think we can all agree that soy sauce absolutely slaps, but did you know that it can actually kill you with a surprising small amount?

It sounds impossible - and admittedly very bizarre - but it's actually true.

Now, let's be honest, there's pretty much nothing you can’t put soy sauce on that it wouldn’t instantly make tastier, everything from sushi and chicken noodle soup to even cheese on toast – try it, you won’t regret it.

However, as with all things that are great, you have to consume it in moderation.

Chocolate, alcohol, chips, there’s only so much of anything you should be having in a short space of time, and soy sauce is no different.

In fact, it’s imperative that you don’t have too much soy sauce, because it can actually be quite dangerous if you consume too much of it.

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Because of the amount of salt in soy sauce, you could even die if you have too much.

Don’t worry, though – you’re unlikely to have too much, it’s still quite a bit.

Just don’t go around quaffing it down by the bucket-load... That’s when you’re going to start having problems.

Soy sauce has been making our food taste that bit better for around 2,000 years, remaining pretty much as it is to this day.

However, it’s really toxic if you have too much of it, because there’s about 900 milligrams of salt in a single tablespoon of the stuff, meaning that too much of it would be a serious amount of salt.

More than your body could handle, as it happens.

There are a few well-documented cases of people ingesting too much soy sauce.

For example, in 2013 a 19-year-old man downed a quart – about two pints – of soy sauce and ended up in the emergency room in a coma.

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The doctor who treated him, David J Carlberg, said: “He didn't respond to any of the stimuli that we gave him,

“He had some clonus, which is just elevated reflexes. Basically the nervous system wasn't working very well.”

He was suffering with hypernatremia, which is when the body tries to regulate salt levels between blood and tissue by moving fluid out of that tissue.

It can cause fatal build-ups of fluid in places like the lungs, as well as causing bleeds on the brain as it shrinks when water leaves it.

Basically, it’s not good.

In the case of this person, he was treated very quickly, but he still had three days before regaining consciousness and mental faculties.

He was really lucky though, as fatal levels can be much lower than what he consumed.

There was another woman who wasn’t as lucky, as she consumed a load of soy sauce after suffering from depression.

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Though doctors tried to help, she died from a pulmonary oedema as a result of the fluid on her lungs, although doctors observed that she also had severe brain damage.

The lethal dosage of salt is broadly between 0.75 grams per kilogram of body weight to four grams per kilogram of body weight, meaning that the average person – weighing about 68 kilos - would need to consume 135 grams of salt, or around 7.5 tablespoons.

One cup of soy sauce contains about 14 grams of salt.

So next time you’re thinking of over-seasoning, just make sure you don't put shed-loads of the stuff on there.