The Loop
Death Wish coffee recalled for actually being deadly
Of the six-trillion unfortunate byproducts of capitalism, misleading—or outright false—advertising is by far one of the most familiar. This app helps your precious little detention MVP pass algebra. This berry cures poverty. This LED light makes your package bigger, and so on and so forth until the closets are full, the creditors are knocking, and suddenly you find yourself wondering what you did with that waffle maker-cum-home-security system. For Death Wish Coffee, however, a little false advertising might not have been such a bad thing, as it turns out their new Nitro Cold Brew, well, might actually kill you.
According to Syracuse.com, the Upstate roaster—best known for pumping a day's worth of caffeine into a single cup (and winning that Super Bowl commercial contest a few years back)—has recalled their Nitro Cold Brew cans after a Cornell lab discovered a toxin in the coffee that could potentially cause a fatal degenerative nerve illness called botulism. For those you who don't know (like me until I Googled it 15 seconds ago), Botulism essentially shuts down your nervous system until you can no longer breathe, at which point bad things start to happen.
So yeah, you don't want botulism and, thankfully, Death Wish Coffee doesn't want to give you it. Here's what they had to say about the recall:
"Our customers' safety is of paramount importance and Death Wish Coffee is taking this significant, proactive step to ensure that the highest quality, safest, and of course, strongest coffee products we produce are of industry-exceeding standards - thus we are taking this measure of recalling all Death Wish Nitro cans from shelves."
The good news for customers—beyond not dying, of course—is that Death Wish will be offering full refunds for recent purchases of their Nitro Cold Brew. All you need is a receipt, but you probably didn't keep that because what sort of psycho keeps their coffee receipts, so please just be smart and dump this self-fulfilling swill down the drain while you still have the chance.