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Man dies from eating more than a bag of liquorice a day

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Man dies from eating more than a bag of liquorice a day

#131
post #110
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24581592 are obviously not cool. If you keep posting flamewar comments we're going to have to ban you again. I don't want to do that, so can you please fix this? Did you not see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23255339 or https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23469154 ?

What is your claim here? That Americans do not consume in absurd quantities as a way of life? Meat, sugar, oil, land, etc.? Is this even a matter of serious debate?

The acts of an individual is not indicative of a whole country. Don't generalize, it's of poor taste.

Re: Man dies from eating more than a bag of liquorice a day

#132

"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/

Well, this is just wacky: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7311916/

So, I guess take some potassium with black licorice and you'll defeat COVID-19!

Re: Man dies from eating more than a bag of liquorice a day

#133

Another 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

Humans can do it much easier with Caffeine. The pathways are related (and basically swapped between humans and dogs; in theory a dog would experience coffee more like we experience hot chocolate). That's why Four Loko was so dangerous and why a lot of colleges tend to have massive "Caffeine Pill Awareness" campaigns and why college administrators (and psychologists) have sometimes thought that Caffeine in any pill fo…

Aw jeez seriously? Caffeine pills are helping me kick my Dew habit.

I suppose if the pills go behind the counter I can just get a kilo of the lab-grade powder and portion it out myself... that would actually make it easier than trying to break the pills in half to taper the dose.

Re: Man dies from eating more than a bag of liquorice a day

#134

I 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 swe…

> 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 Though I don't know what you mean by "non-foods"?

All sugar alcohols do this, not just xylitol. It's worth keeping in mind, as they are quite common sugar substitutes.

Re: Man dies from eating more than a bag of liquorice a day

#135
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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).

“I absolutely hate the taste of black licorice.“ Liquorice is an acquired taste ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acquired_taste ). You have to learn to like it.

Growing 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.

Re: Man dies from eating more than a bag of liquorice a day

#136
post #94
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dutch 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.

...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?

let's hope those tourists and foreigners read Dutch if and when labels are added to packaging!

Re: Man dies from eating more than a bag of liquorice a day

#137
post #26

Another 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

Oh gosh, I used to eat massive amounts of chocolate for easter when I was a kid and I would get really sick from it.

I 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...

Re: Man dies from eating more than a bag of liquorice a day

#138
There 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").

Re: Man dies from eating more than a bag of liquorice a day

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans can do it much easier with Caffeine. The pathways are related (and basically swapped between humans and dogs; in theory a dog would experience coffee more like we experience hot chocolate). That's why Four Loko was so dangerous and why a lot of colleges tend to have massive "Caffeine Pill Awareness" campaigns and why college administrators (and psychologists) have sometimes thought that Caffeine in any pill fo…

Aw jeez seriously? Caffeine pills are helping me kick my Dew habit. I suppose if the pills go behind the counter I can just get a kilo of the lab-grade powder and portion it out myself... that would actually make it easier than trying to break the pills in half to taper the dose.

Everything I've read suggests you would be much better off using black coffee to wean from a soda habit, especially if you don't like the taste of black coffee (because it might just wean you off caffeine altogether). The ritual of brewing a cup of coffee (even as simplified as it has gotten with modern single cup machines) is a useful slowdown to measure your doses by.

Also, it's an easier switch than "cold turkey" from all the sugars of soda if you do want to cheat and not go straight to black coffee but start with sugars/creamers and work your way towards black as you acquire more of a taste for it.

(ETA: And you can progress to black tea then red/green/white easily as a way to cut caffeine in stages. Anyway, good luck trying to break the Dew habit, I sympathize.)

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