Mom Writes Grave Warning After Novelty Food 'Dragon's Breath' Sends Son to Hospital
Dear Liftable readers, do any of you enjoy slightly silly action movies? I sure did, particularly in the late eighties and early nineties, and one of my favorites was Arnold Schwarzenegger’s “Terminator 2.”
This whiz-bang flick featured Arnie trying to defeat a shape-shifting robot made out of liquid metal. Guns didn’t work, fisticuffs didn’t work, and one of the only ways the former governor of California could even slow the evil automaton was by freezing him in liquid nitrogen.
It was a particularly awesome scene with the frost-rimed antagonist getting shattered into a million pieces by Arnold. And it drove home a simple point: Liquid nitrogen is super cold and super dangerous.
Still, the cool liquid has gotten some cool uses, particularly in food preparation. From cocktails to ice cream, liquid nitrogen has cropped up in all sorts of edibles.
The latest place it has popped up is in Dragon’s Breath, a dish trademarked by the West-coast dessert chain Chocolate Chair. According to The Kansas City Star, generic versions go by other names such as “nitro puffs, dragon nitro puff, Heaven Breath, dragon balls, and snow balls.”
In its most basic form, the treat is super-sweet kids cereal that’s been soaked in liquid nitrogen. When people eat it, the rapidly warming liquid (which is -321 degrees Fahrenheit) allows them to blow billows of steam like, well, a dragon.
Teens and young adults have taken to posting videos of themselves exhaling “smoke” on social media. It’s a dramatic sight, one that caught the eye of Johnny McKenny, a kid from St. Augustine, Florida.
“I want to share Johnny’s story with everyone to serve as a cautionary tale in hopes that it could prevent this from happening again,” his mother, Rachael McKenny, wrote on Facebook. “Johnny saw [a Dragon’s Breath kiosk at the mall] and wanted to try it yesterday. Unfortunately, I let him.”
Why “unfortunately”? Well, Johnny wasn’t just your ordinary kid. He has asthma, although not a particularly bad case of it.
“We took the kids up to The Avenues mall in Jacksonville yesterday,” McKenny wrote. “On our way out, we let the kids split one order of the Dragon’s Breath cereal treats.”
Not long after, Johnny started to cough — and kept coughing. After a half hour, his hacking had gotten so bad that McKenny had become seriously scared.
“Thankfully, [her husband] John knew that there was a firehouse just down the road near the courthouse and the jail,” she said. “We were able to stop at the fire station and the EMTs were able to immediately start Johnny on an albuterol treatment and hook him up to an IV while preparing him for transport.
“The nebulizer was not improving his breathing at all and, by the time they got him loaded into the ambulance, he needed a shot of epinephrine.” Fortunately, that dose of artificial adrenaline did the trick, and Johnny soon started feeling better.
McKenny blamed “the liquid nitrogen smoke from the Dragon’s Breath” for her son’s reaction. However, Dr. James Tomarken, the Suffolk County Commissioner of Health Services, has said that improper preparation probably causes such problems.
“There is potential for injury associated with the use or service of liquid nitrogen, so we advise that precautions be taken when preparing or eating liquid nitrogen puffs,” he said in a statement. “Instances of frostbite and tissue damage have been reported when residual liquid nitrogen is left in the serving cup.”
Improper preparation or not, some parents may decide to avoid the treat altogether. With a liquid this dangerous, the downsides may seem too dire.
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