A Bag of Licorice Every Day and Then Boom, Dead
How can a healthy man suddenly drop dead out of nowhere? A group of American doctors investigated the case in order to publish about it in the leading medical journal The New England Journal of Medicine. One or two bags of licorice every day proved fatal for the man.
The doctors at Massachusetts General Hospital, where the man was brought, considered it a mysterious case. He lost consciousness in a McDonald’s in Massachusetts in January 2019. He never regained consciousness in the hospital and died within a day. How can someone without any significant health problems suddenly die? They investigated and reached the shocking conclusion that it had to be the licorice the man ate. A few weeks earlier, he had switched from red strawberry-flavored licorice sticks, known as Twizzlers, to black licorice sticks made with licorice root, and he ate one or two bags of them every day.
Two bags of licorice and a pack of cigarettes
To be fair: the journal article reveals that the man was not otherwise in perfect health. He did take a walk around the block with his dog every day and worked in construction, but aside from his licorice addiction, he also ate very unhealthily and smoked a pack a day. Still, it was the licorice sticks that proved fatal. The licorice extract in the sweets caused his blood potassium level to drop so low that he died from it.
Warning: don’t eat too much licorice!
The American doctor who treated the man believes that sweets containing licorice extract should carry a warning on the packaging. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the FDA, says that such an additional warning is not necessary. Its guideline is that people over forty should eat no more than 2 ounces (55 grams) of black licorice to prevent heart problems. The Dutch Nutrition Centre advises a maximum of 120 grams of licorice per day, or half a liter of licorice-root tea.
Read also:
- Moment of truth: which English licorice should go?
- Licorice? Ice cream? Who says you can’t have both!
- American school lunches are ridiculously unhealthy (and just look at France)
Source: New York Times
