Rice Cake Kills Nine in Japan

Traditional Japanese mochi rice cake
Mochi rice cake kills nine in Japan.
Mochi – glutinous cakes of pounded rice – are traditionally eaten in vast quantities over the holidays, usually in soup, or toasted and served with sweet soy sauce and wrapped in dried seaweed.


This sticky delicacy has caused several deaths in Japan in the last three years – especially, the elderly that finds it difficult swallowing it. Two persons in 2013, four in 2014 died from the food. This year’s number is rather high and it is expected to be on the increase as Japan’s population ages.

Every year, Japan’s emergency services warn people to cut the mochi into bite-size pieces before serving them to young children or elderly relatives.
They recommend that at-risk consumers chew each piece into an easily digestible paste before swallowing, adding that mochi should never be eaten alone.
A stuck Mochi paste is popularly dislodged by a slap on the back of the victim or by performance of Heimlich maneuver.
A firm in Osaka said it had developed easy-to-swallow mochi containing an enzyme that renders them less sticky.
Japanese people eat an average of 1kg of Mochi a year especially in January, Mochi Trade Association said.



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