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Man dies from eating more than a bag of liquorice a day
- mikecoles 6y agoI did some looking into what made black licorice taste so good and to see if enjoying it was genetic. I was surprised to find out it can be toxic. All of these years my grandfather and I have been poisoning each other. Guess we should celebrate we survived it with a pint of sarsaparilla.
- jasonv 6y agoI've been eating a small handful of gluten-free licorice daily for the last couple of months.. dang.
- copperx 6y agoIs liquorice derived from wheat?
- thaumasiotes 6y agoNo, but the candy has to have some kind of structural element.
- pvaldes 6y agoNot, is from the root of a legume. Anything that substitutes cereal flour by legume flour is gluten free. Same if you just mash the dried root to extract the flavor, instead to eat the candy bar. The problem is that legume flour is normally very toxic in raw, and therefore more complicated to produce. Legumes have a much better reputation than Solanaceae, but they are still able to build some serious chemical weapons. Licorice belongs to the same tribe as Colutea, a genus used to poison mammals. Is the only genus seen as edible in its group if I'm not wrong. I don't know if it can be adulterated.
- jasonv 6y agoMost liqorices use wheat gluten to bind the ingredients into candy.. I was enjoying some rice flour variations.
- tachyonbeam 6y agoIt tastes absolutely horrible to me. I guess somewhere deep down, I knew all along that it's actually poison.
- boomlinde 6y agoPoisonous like water, table salt and other substances that are lethal in excess and benign or even essential in moderation.
- smoyer 6y ago> Poisonous like water http://dhmo.org/ http://dhmo.org/
- kenned3 6y agoNo, Poisonous like water : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_intoxication https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_intoxication if you drink enough of it too quickly, it will overload your kidneys and kill you.
- gridlockd 6y agoYou wouldn't casually consume toxic amounts of water or table salt, but a bag and half of licorice per day doesn't sound all that excessive to me.
- vidarh 6y agoA bag and a half of licorice a day without adequate dietary sources of potassium. And a bag and a half of licorice a day for any length of time would wreak havoc on your digestion.
- Dylan16807 6y agoThose don't continue tasting good when you already have dangerous levels of them in your system. So no it's not poisonous in the same way.
- tootie 6y agoEverything is toxic in high enough quantities.
- crowbahr 6y agoLicorice is toxic in relatively low quantities though. > If you’re 40 or older, eating 2 ounces of black licorice a day for at least two weeks could land you in the hospital with an irregular heart rhythm or arrhythmia. https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/black-licorice-trick-or-treat https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/black-licoric...
- ThePadawan 6y agoThat phrasing so annoyingly waffley. "Could" might mean "if you're already predisposed to arrhythmia" or "if you're somewhat allergic to the ingredients". As it stands, I feel that sentence could apply to any atypical food, like pickled herring or durian fruit.
- wffurr 6y agohttps://xkcd.com/1260/ https://xkcd.com/1260/
- tyingq 6y ago"Well, sassafras and sarsaparilla both contain safrole, a compound recently banned by the FDA due to its carcinogenic effects."[1] Argh. [1] https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/did-you-know/root-root-beer-sassafras https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/did-you-know/root-root-bee...
- Scoundreller 6y agoYeah, I’m sure the ban on safrole had nothing to do with its use in making MDMA. But I see that the FDA still hasn’t banned cigarettes. Not enough evidence?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- kempbellt 6y ago> what made black licorice taste so good It's amazing that people can have such different tastes. I absolutely hate the taste of black licorice. Though the act of poisoning yourself and others for fun is an extremely normalized behavior, and has been for thousands of years. We just call it drinking (alcohol).
- Someone 6y ago“I absolutely hate the taste of black licorice.“ Liquorice is an acquired taste (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acquired_taste https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acquired_taste). You have to learn to like it.
- kempbellt 6y agoSo is beer and I've learned to enjoy beer. I've yet to learn to like licorice and lost interest in trying.
- gridlockd 6y agoI'm quite sure it is genetic. I've hated it since childhood, whereas my mutant childhood friends liked it. I've acquired several tastes since then, I've tried licorice multiple times, to no avail.
- sundvor 6y agoHere, have some Vegemite.
- thaumasiotes 6y ago> You have to learn to like it. This is absolutely untrue.
- wrp 6y agoGrowing up in the USA, my impression was that licorice is one of the most popular candy flavors among children. As an adult, I was surprised to discover that every Korean and Japanese I offered licorice to reacted violently to the taste...wouldn't even try to be polite about it. I doubt it's genetic, so I've often wondered what about their diet predisposes them to have such a negative taste sensation.
- rvieira 6y agoI find it incredible that some people enjoy liquorice (the stuff tastes vile to me). Ironically, I know some people that think the same of me when I tell them I love cilantro.
- asiachick 6y agoI am not a fan of licorice. I'm also not a fan of ouzo and similar liquors that are common around Greece, Italy, Turkey that all taste similar. On the other hand, Star Anise, which also tastes the same, is a common spice in Chinese food though it's just a spice and not the main flavor
- gherkinnn 6y agoLiking coriander (cilantro to some) is linked to genes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coriander https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coriander
- jrumbut 6y agoCould you describe the flavor? I understand there are differences in whether people but I'd love to hear if we are experiencing a similar and evaluating it differently or what. I can withstand the flavor but not sure I would ever seek it out.
- yread 6y agoIs the liquid one also poisonous? Asking for a friend...
- throwawayForMe2 6y agoIt can also raise blood pressure.
- 1-more 6y agoI've been thinking I wanted to incorporate it into my next powerlifting meet as a game-day PED because I can absolutely notice my blood pressure going up while eating it. Great now I need to write a grant proposal for the study…
- thisisnico 6y agoI stay far far away from competition as a powerlifter/bodybuilder. You pretty much need PED's just to compete, and not even to compete well, PED's + Insane training and Diet for that.
- 1-more 6y agoEh, the drug tested feds in my area (NYC) are reasonably clean. My non-cheater friends do well enough in local and even national meets that I'm pretty confident in that. I think having an untested outlet for competition (with better cash prizes than the tested feds) helps.
- sjg007 6y agoWow.. unusual case but perhaps black licorice needs to come with warning labels!
- davidw 6y agoIt does: it has a horrible, awful taste!
- kyriakos 6y agoevolution has armed us with a way of detecting food that is not good for us but in this case since its all blended with sugar and other dietary "desirable" ingredients it may fool us.
- davidw 6y agoI think black licorice must be genetic. Some people actually enjoy that flavor.
- doublesCs 6y agoHuh, so it's not just me. I always wondered.
- HenryBemis 6y agoIt's like Marmite.. you either love it or hate it (I hate it).
- rbanffy 6y agoI actually found it meh. It's just weird.
- baby 6y agoEvery time you post something it’s something I could have posted myself. This is truly weird as we share the same name.
- Reedx 6y agoA man eats an entire bag of liquorice. This is what happened to his kidneys. Hyperliquemia Hyper, meaning high. liqu, referring to liquorice. emia, meaning presence in blood. High liquorice presence in blood. https://www.youtube.com/c/ChubbyemuGames/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/ChubbyemuGames/videos
- thaumasiotes 6y ago> emia, meaning presence in blood -em- (from haem-) just means blood. -ia should be interpreted as "condition". Presence isn't indicated.
- jumbie 6y agoA man presents to the emergency room (finger pointing to ceiling) complaining of ringing in his ear.
- freeqaz 6y agoThis absolutely slayed me. Thank you
- chromatin 6y agoThe condition -- not mentioned in the article -- is Apparent Mineralocorticoid Excess (AME). It is something that we read about 20 years ago in physiology textbook but I have yet to ever see in real life. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apparent_mineralocorticoid_excess_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apparent_mineralocorticoid_exc...
- umvi 6y agoApparently a large amount of produced liquorice goes to flavor cigarettes, up to 4% of the weight of a cigarette's tobacco blend is liquorice[0]. So I would wager that smoking liquorice has killed more people than eating it (not that that tidbit of info helps in the case of the man in the article). [0] https://www.dkfz.de/de/tabakkontrolle/download/PITOC/PITOC_Tobacco_Additives_Liquorice_Extract.pdf https://www.dkfz.de/de/tabakkontrolle/download/PITOC/PITOC_T...
- tedunangst 6y agoI don't think it's the licorice that will kill you if you smoke 50 packs a day.
- floren 6y agoThat would be a cigarette every 1.4 minutes, for the entire 24 hours, by the way :)
- eeegnu 6y ago50 packs a month may be what they meant (about the average for chain smokers at more than 1 pack per day.) Or they did imply hyperbole.
- floren 6y agoAlmost certainly hyperbole, but imagining 50 packs a day made me run the numbers for a laugh.
- klyrs 6y agoOn one hand, you can compress that to once per minute and get a reasonable amount of sleep. A quick and guilt-inducing search informs me that one Matthew Tybor smoked a cigarette in a mere 36.44 seconds, so I guess that's plausible if we ignore the carbon monoxide? On the other hand, nicotine is a stimulant, so maybe you wouldn't need to?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- AnotherGoodName 6y agoAnother similar one is chocolate poisoning. Humans can handle 3 times more chocolate per KG of body mass than dogs so the risk is much smaller to us but we're still susceptible at the extremes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theobromine_poisoning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theobromine_poisoning
- baby 6y agoOh gosh, I used to eat massive amounts of chocolate for easter when I was a kid and I would get really sick from it.
- mywittyname 6y agoIn all fairness, this was probably due more to the massive sugar intake than the chocolate. Chocolate is expensive and cheap Easter candy producers probably try to minimize the amount they are actually putting into their candy to control costs.
- WalterSear 6y agoFwiw, high doses of theobromine feel like very high doses of caffeine, but with much more anxiety. So, if you were bouncing off the walls and couldn't sit down or sleep for 24+ hours, that would be theobromine.
- myself248 6y agoI made that mistake as a kid. Got a 3-pound bag of Milky Way Dark Minis for Christmas, and I'm sure it was supposed to last me several months, but I went through about half the bag watching TV that afternoon. The next morning I was so sick I don't have words for how sick I was. Once I finished with the first kind of sick, I still had a pounding headache, acute sensitivity to light and sound, etc. I described the symptoms to my dad, pleading for help, and his first reaction was "...do you have a hangover?" Good lord if that's what hangovers are like, why do people drink? To this day, I point to that experience as the reason I've never had more than two alcoholic drinks in a day. I just can't imagine...
- SomeoneFromCA 6y ago
- legitster 6y ago> "We are told that this patient has a poor diet and eats a lot of candy. Could his illness be related to candy consumption?" Dr Elazer R Edelman said. > The patient had also recently changed the type of sweets he was eating. A few weeks before his death, he switched from red fruit-flavoured twists to another type made with black liquorice. It sounds like this person was already on an EXTREMELY bad diet. I have personally known construction workers who live off of three square meals of gas station junk food for weeks at a time.
- jboog 6y agoYep, I worked at a golf course in groundskeeping for a summer after HS. The diet of the "old timers" was absolutely ridiculous. The worst, Jim, his lunch every day was literally a can of Coca-Cola and a can of Vienna Sausages (shitty canned tiny hot dogs for those that don't know). God knows what he ate before/after work. He had a heart attack one day at work. Was only in his early 50s.
- lostlogin 6y agoAn old timer in his early 50s?
- xtiansimon 6y agoWhy not. Groundskeeper (manual labor) at 50, when you could presumably start that job at 16. At 16, anything over 40 (visible signs of aging) is an ol’timer
- saalweachter 6y agoEspecially when you have a job that uses a lot of seasonal teenage labor. You end up with one group of employees who is "young" (16-early 20s) and works there in the summer, and one group that is "old" (25+) and works there year round.
- srpinto 6y agoYes. I would call you old timer in your 40's. I'm 36 and I'm fine with that.
- callumprentice 6y agoI am a huge fan of liquorice and have been for years but had no idea it could cause hypertension. Since my favorite type is the really salty Dutch kind, I did wonder if that made it worse. However, one of the symptoms is hypokalemia (low potassium) and I think the Dutch salt is potassium based so maybe it's actually helpful. He said, optimistically.
- vidarh 6y agoIs it not using ammonium chloride? That's usually what is used for salty licorice in Scandinavia. It takes huge amounts or really low amounts of potassium in your diet for it to be a problem. Frankly you're likely to notice it on your stools long before you consume enough to be a problem. If you eat lots of licorice mostly just ensure you get enough potassium from other sources.
- callumprentice 6y agoOh yes - that's right. I knew it wasn't plain old sodium chloride but I remember now that's it's ammonium chloride. Thanks for pointing that out.
- gambiting 6y agoSo as an aside - I've had some salted liquorice in Sweden, and the closest I can't compare this experience to is having drain cleaner poured on your tongue, and then rubbed in with some sandpaper. But hey, we eat pickled mushrooms and meat in jelly, so what do I know ;-)
- SAI_Peregrinus 6y agoAaah, but it's like having drain cleaner poured on your tongue and rubbed in with sandpaper, but in a way that for whatever weird reason makes you want to try it again. And again. It's oddly tasty, and you keep thinking "it can't possibly be as bad as the last time" and then it is. But still hauntingly tasty. Weird experience. I want to spit it out, but I also want another piece. On a side note, the salt used (ammonium chloride) is also a primary component of soldering iron tip cleaner. You can buy blocks of the stuff for that purpose, it's highly effective (though extremely aggressive, so to be used only after the wet sponge and brass wool have failed to remove the oxide). Works about like you'd expect it to, given the taste.
- frank2 6y agoYou can buy deglycyrrhized licorice. Example: https://www.vitalnutrients.net/dgl-powder.html https://www.vitalnutrients.net/dgl-powder.html This product is usually used to improve health, not for its taste (though it does taste good IME), and does not contain sugar.
- Shorel 6y agoAnd here in South America I think I have never tried liquorice even once. That and root beer. I don't know if I will like the taste, I just want to know it. EDIT: Why the downvotes? If could buy that stuff I would have!
- jrumbut 6y agoRoot beer is a fun and popular flavor, some people like it more than others. Black liquorice is a bombardment of a very strange flavor. It's a mix bitter, medicinal, sickly sweet, no idea how to describe it. Check this reaction video out, it gets funny around 6:20: https://youtu.be/yHetC2G-xVo https://youtu.be/yHetC2G-xVo
- iso8859-1 6y agoIf you go to your local Scandinavian meetup after the pandemic, people may have some. You can also get it in Rio: https://produto.mercadolivre.com.br/MLB-1513513626-tiras-alcacuz-twizzlers-black-licorice-alcacuz-negra-141-g-_JM https://produto.mercadolivre.com.br/MLB-1513513626-tiras-alc...
- gherkinnn 6y agoI find liquorice tastes a bit like fennel. Ouzo and Sambuca both share similar notes. It’s delicious. Scandinavian salty liquorice is like something else entirely. I like it, but I see how its polarising.
- starkred 6y agoI was surprised to see how clearly the FDA recommends against black licorice consumption. https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/black-licorice-trick-or-treat https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/black-licoric... > If you’re 40 or older, eating 2 ounces of black licorice a day for at least two weeks could land you in the hospital with an irregular heart rhythm or arrhythmia. I love black licorice but as far as I'm concerned that's enough of a reason to do without. Just because the damage is visible after two weeks doesn't mean that it doesn't occur in quantities below that amount.
- tzs 6y agoYou almost certainly do not need to completely drop black licorice. From what the article you linked says, it doesn't sound like it directly damages the heart or the things that regulate heart rhythm. The glycyrrhizin in black licorice lowers potassium levels, and heart rhythm regulation depends on potassium levels. Stop eating glycyrrhizin, and the potassium levels come back to normal. If you only eat black licorice occasionally, and limit your quantity then so that you do not get enough glycyrrhizin to lower potassium levels to where they actually cause anything bad to happen, you should be perfectly safe. As a precaution, next time you have occasion to have a blood test, get your doctor to include a potassium test. If that doesn't come back close to the low end of the normal range, an occasional bit of licorice should be fine. If a potassium test isn't too expensive, it might be interesting to have another test shortly after you have consumed some licorice, to try to get an idea of how much it affects potassium for you. I wonder if the potassium lowering effect of glycyrrhizin could be countered by eating the licorice with something else that is high in potassium. Eat a banana with your licorice, say. Or maybe take a potassium supplement on days you want to eat licorice?
- amyjess 6y agoAs someone who takes a considerable amount of a potassium-sparing diuretic every day for medical reasons, it just occurred to me that I might benefit from eating more licorice, as hyperkalemia is an actual risk of my meds.
- 6y ago
- royletron 6y agoI always knew the Dutch Apekoppen or 'banana monkeys' were the perfect way to enjoy the dangerous black stuff. The mix of high potassium banana with the lethal liquorice makes it both delicious and safe https://www.mrsbeightons.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Banana-monkey.jpg https://www.mrsbeightons.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Ba... PS not endorsed by any kind of real science...
- bjornedstrom 6y agoI think this article is a good example of conflating cause and effect. But not in a fallacious way or value-negative way: it more highlights well, I think, that there is a difficult gray area where "cause" and "effect" both are related and separated from each other, but not in an obviously clear cut way. So he died from hypokalemia and other reasons, but the main (or only) reason for his hypokalemia was the licorice habit. I think this is a good example when it's both correct and not correct to say that the licorice "caused" the death. Contrast with two examples on the two extremes: Consider a situation when he had instead of licorice had ingested some obviously known poison: then I think it's a much more valid statement to say that "man dies from eating poison", because the idea of the poison and the idea of death are very close together. Consider a different situation where the man was smoking one pack of cigarettes _per month_ or _per year_. Then it's not as obvious to say "man dies from smoking". The smoking probably contributed to the death in various complex ways. So you could say that "man dies due from hypokalemia due to excessive licorice consumption not counterbalanced by having an otherwise healthy diet" which is possibly more nuanced, and possibly more (or less) helpful depending on what your purpose is to clarify or simplify things. Thanks for sharing this article, I find this a good and fairly apolitical educational example that I can use when talking about complex causal relations in the future: how cause and effect can be conflated in both positive and negative ways depending on who you are talking to, what you are talking about, and what the purpose of the discussion is.
- nikk1 6y agoUsing that gray area is the art to creating news headlines
- Dylan16807 6y ago> So you could say that "man dies due from hypokalemia due to excessive licorice consumption not counterbalanced by having an otherwise healthy diet" which is possibly more nuanced, and possibly more (or less) helpful depending on what your purpose is to clarify or simplify things. Could you? Do you have anything to back up the idea that an otherwise healthy diet would counteract the very specific problem of hypokalemia?
- cmehdy 6y agoI sure am glad the BBC reports on a death by licorice over, say, the Assange hearing. It is indeed vitally important for me to hear such news after all.
- alekratz 6y agoPeople can think about more than one thing at a time, you know
- cmehdy 6y agoThat's always the argument put forward, isn't it? But apparently in this case they can't, since they haven't. (yes, that is also a syllogism) Also worth noting that the definition of "news" seems to be fairly elusive, when this sort of "news" is worthy of an article and the other sort isn't.
- icedistilled 6y agoYou came to look at it. That's why it was newsworthy, it's the news that people want to read. News follows views.
- cmehdy 6y agoOut of curiosity, following that definition how do you semantically separate news from entertainment? I'm not asking because I am convinced that I have the answer, but because the question is worth being asked :)
- Angostura 6y agoThe BBC reported on the trial 3 days ago, no-one seems to have reported on the last 2 days, so its possible that there weren't proceedings.
- cmehdy 6y agoThrough HN the link seems to be posted each day with the updates, but if you haven't had the chance to catch it, there are at least two sources for the daily: https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/ https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/ https://twitter.com/kgosztola https://twitter.com/kgosztola No major news outlet however, and not even Amnesty international which was not authorized to join.
- elmo2you 6y agoAs a Dutch person (in Holland licorice is pretty popular too), I can tell from personal experience that there should be put a big emphasis on "licorice =>COULD<= be dangerous". I have had periods where I would easily eat a bag oe more of this stuff on a daily basis and for prolonged periods, without even a single hint of the mentioned symptoms, nor anything else that could be related the claimed underlying problem. I also don't recall anyone else with such problems, other than maybe people with a horrible overall lifestyle combined with a taste for licorice. Very well possible that these are particular conditions (like overall shitty lifestyle and addiction to sugar/carbs) that would make licorice potentially harmful. However, at that point, someone will probably have plenty of other things to worry about. I'm by no means disputing that this stuff can cause serious problems for individual people. But I also know plenty of cases, myself being one of those, where even copious amounts of licorice caused no (discernible) problems whatsoever. That itself should questioning the validity of any claimed toxicity, which might only occur under specific circumstances. One might argue that eating sugary candies all day and maybe little proper nutrients aside, could be more of a "cause" than the licorice itself. Even if compounds inside licorice might exacerbate problems even further.
- ponker 6y agoThe demented quantities (of everything) that are very common in the US are probably very infrequent in Holland.
- elmo2you 6y agoI get your point and I personally do consider the dietary habits of many Americans outright insane (though it has to be said that many may have not as much "choice" to eat more healthy, since healthy food appears to have become a inaccessible privilege for many). However, I would (in periods) eat up to 500~700 grams of this stuff myself. Not quite what you could call a small amount by any measure. Still, not a single health issue. I'm over 40. What I think is the bigger problem here is a sensationalized and alarmist presentation of an individual case, where supposedly a "medical" explanation is given for how licorice was the culprit. In reality there might be many other (and possibly more significant) factors involved. I think that what pisses me off most here, is that the BCC (hiding under a protective cover of presenting "news", while pursuing more clicks), implicitly (and probably unintentionally) more or less is giving false "medical advice" to readers who just don't know any better (unless they come from a culture where licorice is popular).
- wolco2 6y agoFor those in a panic Twizzlers Black Licorice is safe as it contains no glycyrrhizin. Most North American candy would be safe. Bulk store users look for signs.
- vector_spaces 6y agoIf any of you drink Traditional Medicinals or Yogi brand teas when you're sick (Throat Coat, Cold Care, etc), note that many of them contain licorice root and therefore glycyrrhizic acid. It drives me crazy that there weren't more prominent warnings on these because people tend to drink dozens of cups a day when they're sick, which can be dangerous for certain people
- Wistar 6y agoStrong black licorice, "lakrids," abounds in Denmark. My brother visited me when I was living there and ate a pound or so of little, tobacco-pipe shaped licorice in an afternoon. He got profoundly ill with a racing heartbeat, lightheaded, dizzy and nauseous. I almost took him to the hospital but he refused. It took a couple of days before he felt good enough to get out of the apartment. Sometime after, I mentioned this to a Danish friend and he said, "Oh, yeah, you never want to eat much of that. People have damaged their eyesight from eating too much."
- umvi 6y agoYou'd think the package would have a warning on it?
- Wistar 6y agoIt usually is sold loose, by the gram, in DK.
- ponker 6y agoDutch people don’t need a warning to stop them from eating a pound of licorice in a sitting. Wanton excess as a way of life is culturally American.
- umvi 6y ago...so just let tourists and foreigners in your country fend for themselves and hope the internet warns them before they eat too much unlabeled poison?
- jdofaz 6y agoDr. Hibbert: Another broccoli-related death. Marge: But I thought broccoli was— Dr. Hibbert: Oh yes. One of the deadliest plants on Earth. Why, it tries to warn you itself with its terrible taste. I feel the same about Liquorice
- EForEndeavour 6y agoHumor aside: oven-roasted or pan-seared broccoli with garlic, salt, and butter tastes amazing! And depending on how much salt and butter you add, is probably way safer to eat than black liquorice.
- Wistar 6y agoWell, what about black licorice with salt and butter?
- parksy 6y agoAnethole, one of the major flavour components of liquorice, is shared among a range of popular cooking herbs and spices. Milder-tasting fennel goes great with loads of cooking, it's quite common to chop up a fennel root to add to slow-cook roasts / braises, or sprinkle fennel seeds over roasts and mix into dry rubs. Anise has a stronger flavour than fennel, which lends itself to stocks, sauces and curries. Less commonly you'll see liquorice root itself used in cooking, I haven't used it myself but I don't see why it wouldn't work - if balanced out and seasoned properly. edit: Of course, just pan frying a slab of black liquorice with salt and butter would get mixed reactions, personally I'd find it overpowering, like eating straight up peppercorns even though they work well in moderation as a seasoning.
- Wistar 6y agoI find tarragon to be reminiscent of anise as well.
- thehappypm 6y agoLiterally any vegetable is good with salt pepper and butter :)
- Smileyferret 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apparent_mineralocorticoid_excess_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apparent_mineralocorticoid_exc... We actually learned about this in med school last week, but I never thought it actually happened to people... Licorice contains glycyrrhetinic acid which inhibits the conversion of cortisol to cortisone. If you have too much cortisol floating around because of this, that cortisol starts activating receptors in your kidneys that are normally activated by aldosterone. This in turn increases your sodium resorption and potassium excretion, so you get high blood pressure and low potassium which can cause arrhythmias. It's called the Syndrome of Apparent Mineralocorticoid Excess and is a usually genetic problem with the enzyme that breaks down cortisol.
- pkaye 6y agoSo it would me even more deadly if they were taking Prednisone?
- Smileyferret 6y agoNot necessarily. Believe it or not, dexamethasone (another corticosteroid) is actually a second-line treatment for this disease because it reduces endogenous cortisol production without binding too tightly to the mineralocorticoid receptor in the kidneys.
- anonuser123456 6y agoCan this imbalance occur transiently? One time, I was awake for ~3 days straight. I ended up in the hospital (visual hallucinations) and the only thing remarkable was low potassium and high BP. But I've had this long running hypothesis that body has trouble with cortisol regulation when I'm extremely fatigued. If I miss a night of sleep, the next night it is extremely hard for me to fall asleep (cortisol inhibits sleep) and I have that terrible 'stress sweat' odor. Remeron will then knock me out... where as hypnotics will not. Remeron being interesting because it inhibits the production of cortisol.
- pfundstein 6y ago
- maskull 6y ago"Of all the compounds, glycyrrhizin was the most active in inhibiting replication of the SARS-associated virus." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7112442/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7112442/
- timdorr 6y agoWell, this is just wacky: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7311916/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7311916/ So, I guess take some potassium with black licorice and you'll defeat COVID-19!
- amyjess 6y agoAlternately, if you're a woman with hypertension, ask your doctor to prescribe you some spironolactone to take along with your licorice. It's a potassium-sparing diuretic that was originally developed as a blood pressure drug. Since hyperkalemia is a potential side effect of spiro, licorice consumption can mitigate that. And as for why you should only take it if you're a woman... well, I guess men can take it, but they wouldn't like the fact that it suppresses your testosterone into the ground.
- jrjrjrjr 6y agoi quit using, it is a bad choice for males. made my nipples hurt, no fun there are better choices.
- BrandoElFollito 6y agoI know that this is not related but I cannot unsee the comments about a similar sweet (Haribo sugar free bear) [1] We do not have these in France (despite having the Haribo museum in the south) so I cannot tell whether this is true or just a sophisticated ad campaign. I am generally very skeptical about food that is completely made up from non-food (that is above "processed") but in the case of licorice this is a sweet we had in France since always (from what I saw, you usually have the ones who love out and the onces who hate it, with a rather empty "meh" section) [1] https://slightlyviral.com/beware-sugarless-gummy-bears-on-amazon-com/ https://slightlyviral.com/beware-sugarless-gummy-bears-on-am...
- ChickeNES 6y ago> We do not have these in France (despite having the Haribo museum in the south) so I cannot tell whether this is true or just a sophisticated ad campaign. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xylitol#Humans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xylitol#Humans Though I don't know what you mean by "non-foods"?
- throwanem 6y agoAll sugar alcohols do this, not just xylitol. It's worth keeping in mind, as they are quite common sugar substitutes.
- nicoburns 6y agoI think non-foods are things like sweeteners which we literally can't digest and just go straight through us. They're not nutritious, and thus arguably aren't food at all (although you can eat them).
- zaroth 6y agoAnyone else suddenly yearning for liquorice?
- riffic 6y agoHow much is "a bag"? This is a terrible unit of measurement.
- Dahoon 6y agoIt's two cups.
- dahart 6y agoI would have guess two pounds, based on how often I see that in the grocery store. Though five pound bags seem to be getting more popular over time.
- riffic 6y agoBy volume, or by weight? edit: A "cup" is just as shitty of a unit of measurement as "a bag": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cup_(unit) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cup_(unit)
- boublepop 6y agoA cup is always by volume, so you can’t really criticize it based on that. A metric cup is 250mL, imperial is ~230mL it’s nowhere near as “shitty” as “a bag”, it’s just a unit of measure that you are unfamiliar with. It’s used quite a lot in baking.
- samatman 6y agoAh, see, I love black liquorice. I always thought people who hate it just lack an adventurous palate, but at least it was an opportunity to relieve them of their black jellybeans. It turns out I was simply ignoring a clear biological signal that the substance is dangerous, in the pursuit of pleasurable sensation. Ah well. Wouldn't be the first time, and won't be the last!
- _Microft 6y agoThere was a case when a woman in Germany also ate lots of liquorice on a daily basis and developed health problems. The case went to court because she thought that she should have been warned by the producer. It was dismissed with a reason like "common sense dictates that this was a bad idea" (think: "lol, wut? u dumb").
- nicoburns 6y ago> It was dismissed with a reason like "common sense dictates that this was a bad idea" (think: "lol, wut? u dumb"). And this is why Europe is less litigious than the US (that and reasonable healthcare costs): the courts won't stand for frivolous cases.
- moron4hire 6y agoReports of frivolous cases in the US are usually PR hit jobs from the company that lost their case.
- nicoburns 6y agoEh, I dunno. The default react to a lot of things here on HN is "talk to a lawyer". It feels very different to cultire here in the UK where lawsuits are seen as a last resort.
- dragonwriter 6y ago“Talk to a lawyer” and “initiate a lawsuit” are very different recommendations.
- strawberrypuree 6y agoCase in point, the off-maligned McDonald's woman. Take a look at the burns that woman sustained and the facts of the case to see how much of a hit job that was.
- 6y ago
- temptemptemp111 6y agoWell it is estrogenic
- irrational 6y ago> A few weeks before his death, he switched from red fruit-flavoured twists to another type made with black liquorice... Further investigation revealed a recent change to a liquorice-containing candy as the likely cause of his hypokalemia. I don't like black licorice, but I love red licorice. I too blame his change from red to black licorice.
- thrownaway954 6y ago"We are told that this patient has a poor diet and eats a lot of candy. Could his illness be related to candy consumption?" Dr Elazer R Edelman said. He had suffered no symptoms before suddenly going into cardiac arrest in a fast food restaurant. i think more than liquorice is blame for this dudes death
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- FandangoRanger 6y agoLiquorice is not licorice in the US. Only licorice has licorice in it. Liquorice does not.
- netule 6y agoIndeed. I'm a Dutch guy who migrated to the US and have had to import all my licorice from abroad since it just doesn't taste the same. Though, now I may want to rethink this consumption.
- codezero 6y agoReminds me of the folks who get sick drinking too much green tea - like, gallons a day. Seems like general good advice is... don't dominate your diet with shitty food or even a single good food. This seems pretty obvious, but people are weird :)
- nwah1 6y agoSurprised both the article and the comments here ignore that licorice is known to be high in lead.
- arh68 6y agoGastropod recently covered this, I think. I recommend giving it a listen, if you're curious about the, well, science & history behind it.
- TheRealPomax 6y ago"Another doctor, Dr Andrew L Lundquist, agreed in the report that the liquorice was to blame" it really wasn't. The man was to blame (if there was any blame at all, because addictive behaviour doesn't really mesh with "blame"), and the liquorice was just the last addiction he'd ever have.
- RickJWagner 6y agoI love black licorice, and have for years. A few years back, I started to notice I'd get a headache if I ate some. My wife told me she heard it was connected to higher blood pressure, which I was unable to confirm despite some self-testing. Still, the headaches persist. So I've been laying off.
- salamanderman 6y agoStick with red vines, everybody, for your health
- hexbinencoded 6y agoUntil I saw the BBC domain, I assumed it was a ChubbyEmu video. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKOvOaJv4GK-oDqx-sj7VVg https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKOvOaJv4GK-oDqx-sj7VVg
- arkanciscan 6y agoIf this happened with Red Vines I'd be dead already
- torgian 6y agoI was surprised it didn't happen in Florida.
- KaiserPro 6y agoMy english side: Thats sad, and also how on earth did he manage to eat that much black aweful goop? My Dutch side: Pffft, fucking casual.
- nazgulnarsil 6y agoIt would appear that god agrees that black licorice is in terrible taste and that liking it should be physically painful.
- rkagerer 6y agoPoor bugger. I can barely eat one of those sticks without feeling gross.
- JoeAltmaier 6y agoPeople die from all sorts of things. My daughter-in-law did a rotation in pathology, and investigated the death from sepsis of an otherwise healthy 30-something male. He had hundreds of filthy fragments of wire in his gut, apparently from the wire brush he used to clean his grill.
- jamyot 6y agoTHAT's why red liquorice is better
- mikeymz 6y agothis guy was eating a bag of sweets (candies) a day. had recently started a licorice binge and collapsed eating a fast food lunch. I think his nutrition was all sorts of fucked up and if the licorice didn't get him the coronary heart disease would have