Man dies from eating more than a bag of liquorice a day • Hacker News Board

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

#51

Post by jboog » Thu, Sep 24, 2020, 6:01 PM UTC

legitster wrote: post #35

> "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 perso…

Yep, 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.

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

#52

Post by elmo2you » Thu, Sep 24, 2020, 6:03 PM UTC

As 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 =>COULDI 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.

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

#53

Post by vidarh » Thu, Sep 24, 2020, 6:04 PM UTC

gridlockd wrote: post #24

boomlinde wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Poisonous like water, table salt and other substances that are lethal in excess and benign or even essential in moderation.

You 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.

A 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.

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

#54

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Sep 24, 2020, 6:06 PM UTC

legitster wrote: post #35

> "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 perso…

[deleted]

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

#55

Post by nikk1 » Thu, Sep 24, 2020, 6:07 PM UTC

bjornedstrom wrote: post #45

I 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…

Using that gray area is the art to creating news headlines

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

#56

Post by wolco2 » Thu, Sep 24, 2020, 6:07 PM UTC

For 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.

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

#57

Post by alekratz » Thu, Sep 24, 2020, 6:07 PM UTC

cmehdy wrote: post #47

I 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.

People can think about more than one thing at a time, you know

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

#58

Post by lostlogin » Thu, Sep 24, 2020, 6:08 PM UTC

jboog wrote: post #51

legitster wrote: post #35

> "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 perso…

Yep, 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.

An old timer in his early 50s?

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

#59

Post by mywittyname » Thu, Sep 24, 2020, 6:08 PM UTC

baby wrote: post #26

AnotherGoodName wrote: post #22

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.

In 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.

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

#60

Post by ponker » Thu, Sep 24, 2020, 6:09 PM UTC

elmo2you wrote: post #52

As 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 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 recal…

The demented quantities (of everything) that are very common in the US are probably very infrequent in Holland.