system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: How come if you're starving to death you can actually die from eating?

I've heard if you're starving and then you start eating too quickly it can actually kill you.  What's going on here?
gpt
Think of how, when you are in the dark for a long time, you start to be able to see your surroundings well enough to move around, although clumsily. Then, just as you've gotten used to the dark, someone turns on ten fluorescent floodlights and aims them right at your face. You feel like your retinas are burning, and you can't block out the light well enough to ease your pain.

When a person is starved, their bodily functions, specifically the levels and types of chemicals released, change. If that person then eats a typical amount of food for a healthy person, their body is not currently equipped to handle the influx of nutrients. It doesn't have the tools it needs, and it can't switch them out quickly enough because it used them all up earlier. The systems essentially shut down because they can't handle the overload, causing the heart to go out of whack. Once the heart starts to go, the entire body stops.

Tl;dr - The body was forced to switch into "dark" mode, then the sudden "light" overwhelmed it and it shut down.