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

> People with healthy lifestyles will feel when they're having too much licorice for their own good.

That's quite a claim, especially if we consider the possibility of low-sugar licorice. I think it requires some evidence.

He might notice some negative effects before dying but that doesn't mean he'd reasonably be able to tell what caused it, and it might already be too late.

Yes it is. Overconsumption of salt eventually leads to health problems because of the chemical imbalance it causes.

This was not someone who ate a bunch of licorice at once and immediately died from it. He adopted a diet almost solely based on licorice candy for three weeks. It's very much a long term effect of eating too much of it.

> An actual salt overdose is something that won't taste good.

Based on personal experience, as a lover of licorice, neither will a licorice overdose. I can't imagine eating pretty much only licorice for weeks on end because eating too much gives me headaches and stomach pains.

> It's not just being able to notice symptoms, it's having licorice start tasting bad to you.

Again, salt doesn't start tasting bad. It just doesn't have a good taste in concentration. An undiluted teaspoon of salt won't kill you, but it'll taste like crap to most people. To others it will taste good, which is partly why salt poisoning still occurs.

> If you have a lot of salt in you, salt starts tasting bad. If you have a lot of water, you're not thirsty, under the vast majority of circumstances.

...and after a couple of weeks of living on licorice?

> What I'm saying is that you could get the same amount of licorice active ingredient without it being a huge portion of your diet. You could even have a healthy-seeming diet that happens to be low in potassium. And then what do you do, when you have mystery symptoms?

Go to a doctor? What would you do if you started experiencing frequent palpitations and constant headaches with no clue as to what caused it? The idea that death from licorice will somehow creep up on you unnoticed although you have a "healthy-seeming" diet is entirely speculative. This case is extremely rare, even compared to water and salt poisoning, and the circumstances around it—that someone pretty much sustained themselves on mostly licorice—are absurd and grotesque.

But yes, by the weasely nature of the term "healthy-seeming" I guess it's true in the sense that it could happen to anyone to whom eating primarily licorice for weeks on end seems healthy.

> With that amount of sugar, someone with a healthy lifestyle could plausibly "feel when they're having too much candy for their own good". But if you get rid of that part, and focus on just the licorice, the claim that someone will "feel when they're having too much licorice for their own good" needs proof.

You mean that "Oh I'm having constant headaches and my heart is playing King Crimson songs but it's probably just sugar so I don't have to do anything about it" is a reasonable attitude, or do you mean for me to prove to you that hypokalemia has symptoms?

"This imbalance caused heart disease" is very different from "this imbalance caused me to die".

> Again, salt doesn't start tasting bad. It just doesn't have a good taste in concentration. An undiluted teaspoon of salt won't kill you, but it'll taste like crap to most people. To others it will taste good, which is partly why salt poisoning still occurs.

I've had some extremely salty things and they tasted great until some of that salt got absorbed, then they stopped tasting great. There's taste-based regulation of salt. Do you want scientific references? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specific_appetite here's some links.

> ...and after a couple of weeks of living on licorice?

You just claimed the body doesn't do that with salt. Are you really trying to simultaneously argue that the body does do so with licorice?

I'm skeptical that there are inbuilt licorice systems. I think the burden of proof is on you there.

> Go to a doctor? What would you do if you started experiencing frequent palpitations and constant headaches with no clue as to what caused it?

Going to a doctor is a good idea! But I thought your claim was that they would "feel" licorice was the problem, not that a doctor could tell them.

> the circumstances around it—that someone pretty much sustained themselves on mostly licorice—are absurd and grotesque

Right, but I'm saying that someone who wasn't sustaining themselves on licorice candy could still be getting the same amount of actual licorice. For example, only getting 100 calories from sugar-free licorice candy, and 95% of their calories from normal food.

> You mean that "Oh I'm having constant headaches and my heart is playing King Crimson songs but it's probably just sugar so I don't have to do anything about it" is a reasonable attitude, or do you mean for me to prove to you that hypokalemia has symptoms?

I mean that they won't know it's from the licorice. They will feel "something is wrong" not "I am having too much licorice for my own good".

Well, the mechanism through which licorice might cause you to die is hypokalemia, which causes heart disease, which causes you to die. They only look dissimilar because you ignore this.

> There's taste-based regulation of salt. Do you want scientific references? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specific_appetite here's some links.

Taste is not the same thing as appetite.

> You just claimed the body doesn't do that with salt.

My mistake. I also explained why exactly I don't think I would be able to live on a licorice-based diet, an explanation which doesn't pertain to taste.

> I'm skeptical that there are inbuilt licorice systems. I think the burden of proof is on you there.

I don't care that you are skeptical of "inbuilt licorice systems", and there is no burden of proof there because no one has mentioned it until now.

> Going to a doctor is a good idea! But I thought your claim was that they would "feel" licorice was the problem, not that a doctor could tell them.

Yes, as you would feel a knee pain even if you didn't know you'd hurt it in your sleep.

> Right, but I'm saying that someone who wasn't sustaining themselves on licorice candy could still be getting the same amount of actual licorice.

Again, entirely speculative that this would cause an issue if you have an otherwise healthy diet.

> I mean that they won't know it's from the licorice. They will feel "something is wrong" not "I am having too much licorice for my own good".

They will feel that they've had too much licorice for their own good. I never intended to claim that they would magically know the cause. Maybe the sentence is ambiguous, but for you to assume the interpretation you have, you must think quite poorly of me.