Talk:Theobromine poisoning

I
I found this text over here :

They are not allergic, but they cannot metabolize it. Chocolate has caffeine and theobromine in it -- two bioactive chemicals which we have no difficulty metabolizing because we have liver enzymes which break them down fairly rapidly. Dogs don't have very much of these enzymes, however, and cats have none at all, which means that the molecules don't get broken down and rendered inactive. Imagine taking half-a-dozen No-Doz and not being able to work them out of your system for 4-6 days, and you have an idea of what caffeine and theobromine does to cats.

It might be worth writing some facts and the example into the article.

Fatal
Fatal hyperlink in the main body paragraph leads to a role-playing game. Please fix it! Jay Kay 19:01, 17 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Fixed the redirect at fatal instead. Femto 19:22, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Toxicity in humans
Are there any numbers on how dangerous theobromine is to humans? The TDlo seems like a bit of a special case, since it implies that 130 grams of baker's chocolate can be toxic for a 70 KG human. This seems to be quite lower than what you might expect from the average human (I have myself ingested comparable doses without any ill effect).--Simen 88 14:02, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
 * As the article states, the compound is not dangerous to humans because the human body can metabolize it without ill effect. -216.138.38.86 14:08, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

I am removing the information goven for theobromine toxicity in humans until references are provided, as it seems very unlikely to me. Kostja 15:24, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Looking through the history, it appears that the 10kg figure for a lethal dose of chocolate in humans comes from some BBC comedy game show. If somebody wants to track down that episode and make a proper reference to it, well, it would still be a pretty poor reference, but I guess it would be better than nothing. --Skrapion (talk) 13:33, 28 December 2008 (UTC)
 * The book has the info too, if you just want to reference that. 90.195.179.46 (talk) 18:14, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

31.11.2009. Hi, am not a scientist - but am hypersensitive. 100grams of chocolate is quiet toxic to me. (Or a half litre of cocoa - these make my days!)Same goes for alcaloids, some hormones, and what is really bad: most of antiastmatics, etc... There must be an article related to this somewhere? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.224.140.11 (talk) 22:14, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

2014-02-07: The german article on Theobromin cites a medical book (footnote #11) where Theobromine LD50 for humans is given at 280 mg/kg bodyweight. Since the LD50 value is independant of body weight and humans weight much more than cats,dogs or mice, that value seems much more reasonable than the curious 4 times larger value of 1000mg/kg in comparision with other animals. Please also note that speed of metabolization does not enter into LD50. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:470:9B81:1:D979:73D8:44C0:6E9B (talk) 03:25, 7 February 2014 (UTC)

This section currently discusses theobromine contents of some chocolates, which does not really belong here, and says nothing about toxic levels for humans but "occasional serious side effects may result from the consumption of large quantities, especially in the elderly" which is not sourced. If that is all anyone here knows about it, the section should be deleted. Colin McLarty (talk) 09:29, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

This is retarded
"A typical 20 kg dog will normally experience intestinal distress after eating less than 240 g of dark chocolate, but won't necessarily experience bradycardia or tachyarrhythmia unless it eats at least a half a kilogram of milk chocolate."

I would experience intestinal distress after eating a half pound of chocolate too... 240 grams of dark chocolate is 5.85 dark chocolate candy bars and 500 grams of milk chocolate is 8.33 bars. Additionally, 500 grams is 1/40th of the dogs total body weight, If the average adult male ate 1/40th of his body weight (81.5kg) in milk chocolate it would come out to 2.04 kg, 4.49 pounds, or 33.94 bars of milk chocolate! --Nbritton 09:34, 25 April 2007 (UTC)


 * You could convert that to bittersweet chocolate, which would require maybe half as much of it as dark chocolate. But, that paragraph isn't consistent in the first place, it says 240 g (8.5 oz) of dark chocolate and 25 gram (1 oz) baker's chocolate, the math there doesn't work, dark chocolate is not only 10% cocoa. Undeaf (talk) 22:19, 2 August 2009 (UTC)


 * I understand these updates are quite old, but you must realize a dog can be quite the glutton, I fine it quite easy to believe that a dog could eat 1/40th of its wight in chocolate. remember for them there is no difference between good food and bad, all they care is its food, from what I can find, Wolves can eat 20lb in a sitting and with a weight of 190 lb thats 1/10th, and eating only 1/4th that for a fairly close relative seems realistic. maybe it would be easier to say, "if a dog managed to eat its fill of dark chocolate it would be enough to be fatal" though since it has a 4 day life span, its entirely possible for the dog to take the poison over 4 days and die from that. 202.81.18.30 (talk) 00:25, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

WikiProject class rating
This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 14:17, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

dogs and eating chocolate
I was wondering how many people actually let their dogs eat some choc? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.214.92.177 (talk) 23:25, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
 * It's usually accidental - the dog eats too much chocolate if somebody leaves it where the dog can find it when nobody's looking. Most people know not to give them chocolate, or only give them a little taste anyway. Nobody deliberately gives their dog a whole bar of dark chocolate for a treat, and it would take more than that to poison the dog. --76.102.243.117 (talk) 18:33, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

Unhelpful
Increase information here is needed here to help judge toxic level for dog I believe. Chocolate usually has the percent coco solids it contains and can be anything from 10% to 95%. (For some reason they don't show Theobromine content?) Is coco solids a good indicator for Theobromine content? What percent of the solids is Theobromine? The miserible maths I am faced with is a dog who has eaten 125 grams of 40% milk chocolate. 125x0.4 = 50 grams of solids times 1.2% (percent of bean from article) is 0.6 grams of Theobromine or 600mg - Dog is 8 Kg giving a dose of 75mg/kg. I think that means.... well its more than 16 and less than 300. It's not helpful. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.193.140.113 (talk) 21:06, 19 April 2012 (UTC)