Skip to main content

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.



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Tips for Emerging Successful in the English Proficiency Test of the Post Graduate School, University of Ibadan

A Focus on the Nature of the Test English proficiency test for the University of Ibadan Postgraduate school was a recent innovation by the Board of the PG School at ensuring quality of the students admitted to the school for postgraduate studies. They stated that they have noticed an unprecedented poor use of English among students of the University of Ibadan; that if such was the case with the students of the prided University of Ibadan, how much more students from other universities that belonged to the lower rung of ranking in academic excellence. They posited that English language was the language of instructions and as such, a test for proficiency for prospective students is to say the least, imperative. The test is a one hour exercise in which you are required to answer 100 questions. To be on a very safe side and finish before the time allowed elapses, you are therefore required to answer each question within 30 seconds. I bet this is challenging; so brace up against it i...

Postgraduate (MSc) Programme of the University of Ibadan - Basic Information

Becoming a postgraduate student (MSc level) in the University of Ibadan is not difficult if you are a hardworking student. There are few things that you need to know. You are therefore in the right place in your search for information on this. This simple piece, will tell you some of the basic processes involved in it; how to emerge successful in admission and how to avoid falling victim of fraud by the bad eggs. Rough budget for the programme from the standpoint of my department, the department of political science will also be discussed. Basic Processes Involved

LIMITATIONS OF INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS: A FOCUS ON THE UNITED NATIONS ORGANIZATIONS

Introduction International relations which was generally seen as relations among nations and entities in the international arena begets international organizations. An international organization is a union of actors in the international arena, formed to perform specified functions and/or solve identified problems for the members and/or non members. The concept of an international organization can also be seen on the one hand as a logical progression in the evolution of political entities from the basic family or tribal grouping of pre- and early historic times to the feudal arrangements of early Europe which emerged following Peace of Westaphalia in 1648 (Imber 1984). A second perspective on international organization is that as being something antithetical to the state in effect an external entity which may subsume or destroy the state. This latter view is held by many chauvinists and protectionists who find the economic, political and cultural mongrelization which they claim...