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Trick or Treat: Don't Eat Too Much Black Licorice on Halloween, Warns FDA
It's that time of year again when ghoulish children turn up at your door, demanding payment in candy or threatening a sinister trick instead. But if you're keeping a bowl of sweets on stand-by, you might want to leave out the black licorice.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued a warning ahead of Halloween—which it describes as the "biggest candy eating holiday of the year"—urging people not to overdo it on the medicinal-tasting candy or potentially face heart problems.
The problem is caused by glycyrrhizin—a sweetening compound derived from the root of licorice, a low-growing shrub that is found most in Greece, Turkey and Asia. When consumed in large amounts, glycyrrhizin can prompt potassium levels in the body to fall. Low potassium can lead to a variety of health issues, particularly abnormal heart rhythms, but also high blood pressure, swelling, lethargy, and even congestive heart failure.
The FDA warned that, for people 40 years old or over, eating two ounces of black licorice a day for two weeks can result in arrhythmia, or irregular heart rhythm. Potassium levels usually return to normal with no permanent health problems when a person stops eating it, according to the FDA's Linda Katz.
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Also at Business Insider.
(Score: 2) by qzm on Wednesday November 01 2017, @03:57AM (5 children)
The big thing here is that they are warning people against a subtle effect that could cause a problem for a small minority of the population.
And ignoring the effects of the sugar itself, which, while having perhaps a more minor effect, is a negative for pretty much everyone, including the huge number of children partaking.
Nice to see they are looking at the big picture here.
Having an actual celebration which is almost completely linked to 'lots of candy eating is fun and good', for children, is a non-issue. Nice to know.
I am so pleased that obesity is a solved problem.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 01 2017, @04:16AM (3 children)
Why would they focus on the sugar? Are there tons of people out there that are unaware of what sugar does in the body that could reasonably be swayed via a media blitz?
People know the issues associated with sugar, they don't typically know the risks associated specifically with licorice.
As far as obesity is concerned, that's mostly because people work too long at work get stressed out, can't afford decent food and have poor access to exercise. Cutting sugar out would probably help a bit, but let's be honest about the fact that there's a lot of factors that go into making it hard to keep the weight off. Much of the "food" that people can afford to eat has poor nutritional quality and is full of various crap that's known to make it hard to keep the weight off.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday November 01 2017, @12:00PM (2 children)
That is often repeated, but I question it. Vegetables and a vegetarian diet are quite nutritious and cheap. You'd need to cook and do some preparation, but it's manageable, even for a poor person with little time. Throw stuff in a crockpot in the morning, eat a hot meal in the evening.
When I see the apocryphal poor people in the store, they're always buying the processed food, the big bottles of sugary soda, etc. They're the ones lining up at McDonald's.
Those are the food choices they make, not a reality they can't change.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 01 2017, @12:45PM (1 child)
but vegetables aren't addictive
(Score: 3, Informative) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday November 01 2017, @01:31PM
They can be, but it takes a long time to acquire the addiction. Or maybe it's better classified as a habit. Once you have it, you don't desire unhealthy food anymore because it feels empty and pointless and makes you sick to your stomach.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 01 2017, @06:05PM
Most of the sweetness comes from glycyrrhizin, which naturally occurs in licorice plant roots. This is a 0-calorie sweetener. There is usually molasses too, which will have some residual sucrose. The molasses is there mostly for color; cheaper licorice has artificial color instead.
The other ingredients are wheat flour and aniseed oil. That's it. There are just 4 ingredients: licorice root extract, aniseed oil, molasses, and wheat flour.
If you are worried about stuff like obesity and diabetes, the worst part of licorice candy is overwhelmingly the wheat flour. The molasses counts for something too, though not much.
So, it's like eating pretzels or bread or tortillas, though normally one would eat far less licorice.