Teen fell seriously ill after eating too much soy sauce

Soy sauce is a miracle liquid, packed with flavour and offering plenty of uses in the kitchen.

Along with being a great garnish and dipping sauce, it’s a useful cooking ingredient any time you need a bit of umami, some rich seasoning, or to bring out a meaty flavour. Try a teaspoon of it in a bolognese and see if you notice the flavour boost.

However, it’s a supremely salty sauce, and drinking it neat is not advised. Considering how strong it tastes, you might wonder why anyone would guzzle the stuff straight from the bottle.

In this case, as you might have guessed, it was for a fraternity initiation.

Soy sauce is produced over a long fermentation process - CFOTO via Getty Images

A report published in the Journal of Emergency Medicine detailed how a 19-year-old man in the US drank the best part of a litre of soy sauce as part of his 2013 university fraternity initiation, and he was soon in a heap of trouble.

Soon after drinking the heavy dose, he began having seizures and was foaming at the mouth before being rushed to hospital.

Two hours after imbibing the litre of soy sauce, he was incessantly grinding his teeth whilst otherwise unresponsive. He didn’t respond to verbal commands and his arms were stiff at his sides.

He was treated by doctors who gave him anti-seizure medication and pumped his stomach.

His condition didn’t improve and he fell into a coma before being transferred to the University of Virginia Medical Center.

"He didn't respond to any of the stimuli that we gave him,” Dr David J Carlberg, who was involved in initial treatment, told LiveScience. “He had some clonus, which is just elevated reflexes.

"It's a sign that, basically, the nervous system wasn't working very well."

The report said that the teenager’s blood-sodium levels were the highest that had ever been recorded in someone who had survived salt poisoning, or hypernatremia.

Salt poisoning can be life-threatening, and it’s a race against time to replace the water loss that it causes.

There are around 900 milligrams of salt in a tablespoon of soy sauce, so it can be easy to overdo it when you’re sprinkling it on your food, let alone when you’re downing a litre of it.

Soy sauce is at its best as a cooking ingredient - Luis Alvarez via Getty Images

The 19-year-old in the report was given sugary water in an attempt to dilute the salt in his blood and encourage him to urinate. Apparently his body went through six litres of IV fluid in just half an hour.

In the end he produced four litres of urine, and the salt levels in his blood finally dropped after five hours of treatment.

Thankfully, he went on to make a full recovery despite concerns that he would experience neurological issues or brain damage.

He woke up from the coma after three days, and he was able to return to school a month later.

"We were more aggressive than had been reported before in terms of bringing his sodium back down to a safer range," said Dr Carlberg, adding that less rapid responses to salt poisoning had yielded mixed results in the past.