We actually learned about this in med school last week, but I never thought it actually happened to people... Licorice contains glycyrrhetinic acid which inhibits the conversion of cortisol to cortisone. If you have too much cortisol floating around because of this, that cortisol starts activating receptors in your kidneys that are normally activated by aldosterone. This in turn increases your sodium resorption and potassium excretion, so you get high blood pressure and low potassium which can cause arrhythmias. It's called the Syndrome of Apparent Mineralocorticoid Excess and is a usually genetic problem with the enzyme that breaks down cortisol.
One time, I was awake for ~3 days straight. I ended up in the hospital (visual hallucinations) and the only thing remarkable was low potassium and high BP.
But I've had this long running hypothesis that body has trouble with cortisol regulation when I'm extremely fatigued. If I miss a night of sleep, the next night it is extremely hard for me to fall asleep (cortisol inhibits sleep) and I have that terrible 'stress sweat' odor.
Remeron will then knock me out... where as hypnotics will not. Remeron being interesting because it inhibits the production of cortisol.
I would suggest that the hallucinations were simply a symptom of your sleep deprivation. I've experienced the same after a similar amount of time awake coding.
I starting to suspect I have a variety of such genetic endowments- gout because I can't break down uric acid, high blood pressure that gets instantly elevated when I eat black licorice (which I loved as a kid), variety of allergies, Type II Diabetes (along with most of my sibs, regardless of their diets.)
Not necessarily. Believe it or not, dexamethasone (another corticosteroid) is actually a second-line treatment for this disease because it reduces endogenous cortisol production without binding too tightly to the mineralocorticoid receptor in the kidneys.
Strong black licorice, "lakrids," abounds in Denmark. My brother visited me when I was living there and ate a pound or so of little, tobacco-pipe shaped licorice in an afternoon. He got profoundly ill with a racing heartbeat, lightheaded, dizzy and nauseous. I almost took him to the hospital but he refused. It took a couple of days before he felt good enough to get out of the apartment.
Sometime after, I mentioned this to a Danish friend and he said, "Oh, yeah, you never want to eat much of that. People have damaged their eyesight from eating too much."
I went to the doctor with acute high blood pressure that appeared out of nowhere. Symptoms were an untreatable headache and swelling in the facial region, lasting for a few days.
In the end, I figured out that the cause was eating a big package of the same soft sweet black licorice. I even kept eating it during symptoms, making the condition worse.
My main reaction, after learning that the licorice could cause this, was how the hell is there not a huge warning on the packaging? I can only imagine how bad it could get if I had been already suffering from hypertension when eating it.
I had a similar issue with the acute HBP out of nowhere and constant headaches. My liver levels were also all out of whack. I never figure out what caused it but it did resolve after several weeks. My BP and liver are completely normal now. The best I could do was narrow it down to recently starting to drink a ton of green tea or some supplements that I had started taking. I just cut it all out and it went away.
That reminds me of the time I learned that dates are diuretic while in Morocco. They were so delicious I would eat a bag per day. Even while swearing I must have dysentery.
I seriously doubt it. "Diuretic" means peeing, not pooping. Watermelon is a diuretic. Dates are high in fiber, potassium, sugar, and might cause a bowel obstruction.
Not sure about how they would cause a bowel obstruction. More likely to cause [osmotic diarrhea](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diarrhea#Osmotic), which would be consistent with the original comment. But you’re right, they probably meant “laxative”, not “diuretic”
Fiber can help form stool if you have chronic diarrhea, but it can also help relieve constipation.
You are correct that diuretic refers to peeing; what the poster was probably trying to say was "laxative." And foods high in fiber and sugar can certainly work as laxatives!
On a similar note, I used to not smoke anything but gladly partake in a hookah pipe while out, I liked the different flavors and assumed the “fog” was benign.
I stopped AS SOON AS I heard about how much worse hookah was. I had no clue and am completely appalled at the lack of warnings.
I’ve met many other people that say the same thing.
I still don't smoke anything, and also cut hookah out.
Modern hookah is soaked in glycerin which produces the majority of the vapor, while the tobacco is ideally vaporized instead of combusted as well (although usually it's a combination of burning and vaporization). So if done properly arguably better than a cig. The real issue with hookah is the chemicals and co2 released from the coals imo.
The co (mono) is the problem and the fine coal particles which are NOT filtered by water, the water just cools down the smoke and that lets you breath the smoke even faster and deeper into your lungs.
I didn't know about the glycerin (the same substance used in e-cigs). This makes me think even more that the e-cigarette industry did a huge marketing fail in not calling them e-hookahs.
A number of years ago there was a hookah bar that opened up in town (I live in a small-ish college town). There was an article in the local paper about the emerging popularity of these establishments. It included a quote from one of the frequent patrons talking about how he loved it because it was so safe, that you were just inhaling the “flavor” without any of the harmful chemicals you’d get from smoking[1].
I was astonished at the time, but I guess the belief is more common than I was aware.
Flavored relatively benign smoke that makes you feel light headed that I did once every blue moon, until I did it more often with better connected party friends
Even with knowing of a tobacco and nicotine component I thought the frequency of my own use once a quarter made up for it
But once I found out it was way worse than cigarettes and way unfiltered, I stopped accepting and stopped being in circumstances where it was prevalent
I didn’t have any dependence so that was easy, just a reversion to a mean for me
It was odd that American cities banished indoor smokers to Mars but indoor hookah was A-OK, no disclaimers on the things served to you, no disclosures, servers not required to say anything
Odd. I like personal responsibility as much as the next person so I stopped as soon as I found out
The origin of salty licorice was as a throat lozenge (same reason a singer might gargle salt water ever so often to keep their throat healthy) in cold/freezing fishing waters. (The salt was the important bit, the licorice was just the flavor the fisherman really like to make it sweeter and easier to chew.) It wasn't invented to be an appetite suppressor, though for a lot of people it certainly is. (Not many people like salty licorice, given a choice.) (Also, ironically, salt in general is not an appetite suppressant and there are documentaries about why salt was added to so many foods to increase consumption.)
> Not many people like salty licorice, given a choice
Whenever I read something weird like this I always need to remind myself to mentally add the quantifier "in America". Salty licorice is very popular in a number of European countries including mine (NL).
There’s a great type of Swedish salty liquorice called “djungelvrål”, or “jungle roar”. It has a screaming monkey on the packet. It’s a bit like licking a battery, and once I got used to it I found it delicious. I recommend it. The first bite is rough.
I live in Singapore, and whenever I bring some salty liquorice back from Sweden, my Indian friends are the ones who really enjoy it. I'm guessing that it's because it is a bit similar to Mukhwas.
Yeah I think it's just an acquired taste that American's don't acquire for lack of exposure.
I'm American but was so intrigued after finding it so unpalatable the first time I encountered the salmiak lakrids despite people clearly liking them. I was keen on finding out if it was just a matter of getting used to it.
Now I actually enjoy it and like it. I just still can't handle letting the stronger ones dissolve all the way. It's also very fun to give other Americans to try (I warn them) and see their reaction.
I’m from Minnesota, and my wife is Israeli. We were in Denmark a couple years ago and had occasion to pick up some salty Lakrids licorice. I love it. She thinks it’s vile. To each their own (especially if it means I get more licorice—although clearly in moderation)
When I was in high school, one substitute teacher would try and get kids to compete over who could keep a piece of Dubbel Zout in their mouth the longest. I tapped into my Dutch ancestry and just calmly ate mine while everyone else seemed on the verge of tears.
Hyperpallatability is in part a function of achieving a particular ratio of sweet to savory that convinces some opportunistic mechanism in our lizard brains to gorge on this food because it's high-value and rare.
When they say "betcha can't eat just one" that's not a motto, it's a taunt (or a scientific fact, depending on your perspective).
One of the weird things I’ve found traveling internationally is that salt & butter popcorn is apparently an American thing. In Asia and South America popcorn is almost always sweet. Salt & butter popcorn is one of those things you don’t realize how much you’ll miss it until you go to every market and movie theater in town and can’t find any popcorn that’s not sweet :-/
This is just not true. Salty popcorn is very normal in both Europe and Latin America. The artificial butter component is something that is more American and rarer outside of the US.
I can’t speak to Europe, and admittedly my Latin America experience is somewhat limited to Argentina, Chile, and Brazil, and my Asia experience is mostly China, Hong Kong, Korea, and Vietnam. I’m sure there are places where it’s possible to get salty popcorn, but I have found it incredibly frustratingly difficult to find popcorn that is not sweet on my travels. Often if I do find salty popcorn it will be sweet and salty. I certainly don’t like the popcorn I do find, and I get the impression people from those areas wouldn’t like the kind of popcorn that I enjoy. Which I think was the whole point of this subthread, that culinary preferences are often very regional and things we take for granted in one area might be very different elsewhere in ways we don’t expect. I certainly never anticipated what a quest I would have to mount to find something that seemed so pedestrian to me growing up: salt and butter popcorn
The "salt" in salty licorice isn't table salt like you'd use on popcorn, FYI. It's ammonium chloride. Literally tastes like ammonia. I'm sure it's an acquired taste (I had my first experience with it early this year), but it's frankly awful to my palate.
Disclaimer: I've always loved salty licorice and I'm American
Black licorice is already a contentious flavor here, throwing a big pile of salt on it (however delicious that happens to be) further reduces the audience)
As a person from a tropical country, I was puzzled with all those salty "candy" sold in the west. I ate one and thought who the hell would eat this horrible salty candy on purpose? So those are actually good for the throat on freezing climate?
From a Nordic country myself and have never experienced that effect, nor heard of anyone who would eat it for that. We just like it for the taste. Getting a little more cautious from reading all the comments here though!
What does being from a tropical country have to do with it? I know plenty of tropical country that like salt lassi to which I had the same reaction (who would drink this horrible thing on purpose). But they do. It's a staple.
There might be some little bit salty and spicy drinks, but certainly there is no strong salty candies from where I come from. GP mentioned it might be beneficial in colder climate, which is probably why the culture around here never develops that kind of candies because there is no real need for it. Instead, we have no shortage of sour and spicy traditional candies and snack though.
There's a bunch of suggestions in the threads around here, but the key word to search for is generally "salmiak" [1]. You can order just about anything on Amazon these days, but if you wanted to check for local stores, try for specialty candy shops, especially those with a traditional nordic background or an adjacency to a major shipping wharf.
(I learned about it myself during a photo scavenger hunt in Seattle in college. I'm still amused by the photo from that where the rest of my scavenger hunt team was dying from taste, and I'm the only one enjoying it. There was a well known wharf candy shop we were directed to as the easiest place to buy it and get that photo op [and they were used to and amused by college kids making the stop].)
I grew up in Germany as well (Stuttgart) and love licorice, don't eat too much here but there are quite a few stores that carry it.
Most NW IPAs are nasty, enough said. Luckily the microbrewers are coming off their hops high and returning to drinkable beers again. Lots of great lagers in Oregon right now.
My understanding is that IPA are extremely forgiving compared to lagers, because the hops. If so, that explains to some degree why microbreweries like to make them, they're probably considerably easier to make in a consistent quality than a lager. It makes good sense to build a name and reputation on easier to produce items and use that to perfect more complex and demanding things.
Moved from Seattle to Asheville, and having good non-IPA options has been killer. I've talked to few folks here who say that sours are the new hotness. Not sure if thats a regional thing or a broader trend. Either way, suits my taste much better.
I've come across a few foods that appear to be heavily acquired tastes, and if you did not get used to it as a kid, it is very difficult to change your tastes. Licorice is definitely one for me, it makes me feel like I am eating tree sap. Others include perilla leaves (called sesame leaves in Korean cuisine) and cilantro (people who are not used to it says it tastes like soap).
> However, some people find cilantro revolting, including, famously, the chef Julia Child. Of course some of this dislike may come down to simple preference, but for those cilantro-haters for whom the plant tastes like soap, the issue is genetic. These people have a variation in a group of olfactory-receptor genes that allows them to strongly perceive the soapy-flavored aldehydes in cilantro leaves.
Something I've discovered is one way to acquire a taste for things you want to like eating is to narrow your diet substantially to where that thing forms a substantial component of your sustenance.
Obviously this isn't a great idea if that thing is a junk food snack or the like, but if it's a nutritious healthy kind of thing you just don't enjoy yet, in my experience this method acquires an appreciation and even craving for it within a few months.
It's as if the body learns this is the stuff of survival that's in season now.
Speaking of Koreans, when I lived in Beijing, we used to call cilantro "Korean Kryptonite". It's in many Chinese dishes but the many Koreans that lived in Beijing hated it with a passion.
There are some great YouTube videos of people around the world trying foods from different countries for the first time. Watching people gag on American staples like root beer is a lot of fun.
I don't think that it is actually "acquired". You liked it as a child, and still do. I find it to be vile and inedible, and always have. This preference seems to innate and fixed.
I didn't like beer, wine, whiskey or coffee at 16 or 18 and now do.
I don't know when I started liking black licorice but surely I didn't eat that as a toddler.
I remember my parents giving it to me when I couldn't sleep pretending it was a sleep medication. It worked haha
Are you saying that you went from the "hate liquorice" to the "like liquorice" camp? At what age? I literally don't know of anyone who has "acquired" the taste for liquorice via exposure.
It's really nothing like "aging into" the preference for coffee, beer, whiskey or wine. It's more like the preference for coriander / cilantro, which is genetic.
I appreciate that your experience of liquorice is different to mine, but I ask you to stop explaining my experience of liquorice to me.
> you seem to reject the idea people can go from disliking it to liking it, which isn't the case
I'm saying that I have never seen this happen when the person has the "liquorice averse" reaction, which is not simple a regular food preference or toddler with unfamiliar food thing. And so I am very sceptical.
You say it "isn't the case" but ... nothing more. Ok, that does not convince me.
A common hack to get your kids to eat anything, is to force them to try it at least 10 different times. They always keep spitting it out or crying they don't like it. Eventually one time you feed it to them and they get used to it and like it, as if they never threw a fit with it before. Not everybody's parents did this. That's why there's grown adults that eat nothing but pizza or steak and potatoes...
P.S. that being said, I still don't like broccoli.... Might be one of the only foods I've never liked in any shape or form...
P.P.S. I've had that salty black licorice before when I visited Sweden. I enjoyed it in very small doses.
Forcing your children to eat things they aren't comfortable with is not a hack. Please do not do this. There is a significant difference between providing a positive environment for your child to encounter new foods and forcing them, physically or otherwise, to eat them.
There's something to be said for this, but I also don't think the GP literally meant forcing them. Forcing children to eat something can cause aversion and eating problems. That said, I am a fan of strongly incentivizing thought promising a later treat for the first few times there's something new to try that I want them to give a fair shake to.
To a degree. Hyperbole and idioms are a normal part of communication, as is learning to decipher meaning from them.
If someone said something along the lines of "I would kill my son if they did that", would you take that literally, or as a hyperbolic idiom meaning they would be mad at them and punish them?
I think the actual meaning of the statement in question is ambiguous given the above, and providing for the option that you misinterpreted someone's meaning when condemning their speech likely does a lot to keep the discussion civil and useful.
parents actually killing their child is rare. Parents actually making their child eat specific food, with threat of physical force, not so rare. You don't have to search for a figurative meaning where none is needed.
That's manifestly untrue in some cases. If you like coriander / cilantro, and your child does very much not, would you just feed it to them regularly so that they "get familiar with it"?
That would be bad parenting, and also pointless cruelty to force them to eat "soap" fifty times. Show some empathy, and recognise that your tastes are not necessarily other people's tastes.
Yeah it's odd. I didn't like coffee much until I got a job stacking shelves as a teenager. I'd walk past the instant coffee section a lot. One day a customer bumped the display and a large jar smashed open on the floor. Cleaning it up and smelling it, I suddenly realised I now liked it.
Over the years, I must have. It's invariant. This is _not_ an "acquired taste" thing, it is simply unpalatable to some, and you can kindly stop pushing it.
> I don't care for it, but I don't hate it. It's kind of "meh".
Therefor, if there is a gene that makes one sensitive to the extreme pungency of liquorice in bad way, then you don't have it. You just fall somewhere on the range of preferences that you might find for any taste.
Americans think that Germans drink a lot of Jaegermeister or love that stuff. I only ever saw old people drinking that in Germany, or people on a dare...
I am pretty sure Jaegermeister is more popular in the US than Germany
There are a lot of "digestif" [0] alcoholic drinks experientially very similar to Jaegermeister, it's kind of a thing to be medicinal.
The American pracice of drinking Jaegermeister to excess I get the impression is done because it tastes so bad, like it's fun because it's so gross and we're sharing this exceptional though still mild form of suffering while getting wasted. Misery loves company as they say.
Social drinking to excess in general has always struck me as a form of shared suffering, Jaeger is just on the extreme end of emphasizing it. Very few alcoholic beverages actually taste genuinely good IMHO, unless it's a cocktail full of flavored syrup like a liquid Jolly Rancher.
It's good for a single round of shots, just to add some variety and the shared experience thing. It's definitely not something you'd want to drink all night.
I don't like the taste of alcohol, but clearly some people do, so I'm thinking it's either an acquired taste (or psychological dependency) or some people just have different taste buds or something. I think it's recently become a bit more acceptable to admit that you only drink to be social, though.
Growing up In Finland it was the only candy we would really want to eat, and if given a bag of mixed sweets would first fish out all the salmiakki (salty liquorice), and in the end reluctantly go on with the other, more lame sweets in the bag.
The licorice pipes were not the super-strong shiny black variety but the somewhat sweet, softer black licorice that, when torn, is a dark brown inside.
As many other Danes, I have a total weakness for licorice. But I believe it’s common knowledge that you’re not supposed to eat a lot of it at once. Certain types do have warnings printed on them like “For adults, not for kids” but most do not.
The sneaky part that the article also describes is that you don’t really feel any symptoms until it’s too late. So once in a while when I buy a pack I spread it out over several days, preferably with space in between just to be sure.
Also, my mom ate a bunch of one of those ‘not for kids’ types of licorice when she was pregnant with me which is kind of concerning. I don’t know exactly how much though, hopefully not dangerous amounts. At least I don’t know that I have suffered any direct consequences of that habit.
What? I’m Danish and I’ve eaten 45 of those (lakridspiber), and felt nothing but shame.
Were they the yellow or pink ones?
I generally don’t eat a lot of candy, but maybe once a year in a while I’ll eat quite a lot of whatever crave springs up. Sometimes that is lakrids. Maybe I should be more careful?
Yeah it’s odd, one pack is usually 16-20 and one pack is around a pound if my calculations aren’t way off. One packs is nearing the limit for a session but I can’t ever remember having any headaches or anything from them.
This was in 1987 and came from a little candy store across the street from where I lived in Østerbro just on the edge of Hellerup. IIRC it was sold loose as I remember him eating the pipes out of a paper bag.
My body naturally tells me when I'm not thirsty anymore. I'm not sure my body would tell me when I'm reaching toxic levels of glycyrrhizic acid if I'm snacking on licorice all day.
Just a label like "Licorice contains glycyrrhizic acid. Do not consume more than 10 mg glycyrrhizic acid per day."
Or even just "Licorice contains glycyrrhizic acid." would be enough for people to google it.
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?
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?
My claim is that you have been trolling HN with nationalistic flamebait ("Wanton excess as a way of life is culturally American") and we need you to stop.
Granted that this isn't the 36% in the United States.
But it doesn't justify your confident claim that Nederlanders never engage in 'wanton consumption'; clearly a fifth of your compatriots take a third stroopwafel when a single serving would suffice.
You get to choose the things you say, and although many might agree your statement has some truth to it, I don't see how it adds any substance to the conversation.
Just want to point out that your post make it sound like the tobacco-pibe shaped licorice is strong licorice. It is actually some of the mildest you can possibly make.
> If you’re 40 or older, eating 2 ounces of black licorice a day for at least two weeks could land you in the hospital with an irregular heart rhythm or arrhythmia.
I love black licorice but as far as I'm concerned that's enough of a reason to do without. Just because the damage is visible after two weeks doesn't mean that it doesn't occur in quantities below that amount.
You almost certainly do not need to completely drop black licorice. From what the article you linked says, it doesn't sound like it directly damages the heart or the things that regulate heart rhythm.
The glycyrrhizin in black licorice lowers potassium levels, and heart rhythm regulation depends on potassium levels. Stop eating glycyrrhizin, and the potassium levels come back to normal.
If you only eat black licorice occasionally, and limit your quantity then so that you do not get enough glycyrrhizin to lower potassium levels to where they actually cause anything bad to happen, you should be perfectly safe. As a precaution, next time you have occasion to have a blood test, get your doctor to include a potassium test. If that doesn't come back close to the low end of the normal range, an occasional bit of licorice should be fine.
If a potassium test isn't too expensive, it might be interesting to have another test shortly after you have consumed some licorice, to try to get an idea of how much it affects potassium for you.
I wonder if the potassium lowering effect of glycyrrhizin could be countered by eating the licorice with something else that is high in potassium. Eat a banana with your licorice, say. Or maybe take a potassium supplement on days you want to eat licorice?
As someone who takes a considerable amount of a potassium-sparing diuretic every day for medical reasons, it just occurred to me that I might benefit from eating more licorice, as hyperkalemia is an actual risk of my meds.
Twizzlers aren't exactly Pomfrey (Pontefract) cakes. You'd really need to go to town on them. On t'other hand, if you pick through Allsorts to avoid the more creamy ones (ugh), or actually dealing with Pomfrey cakes (or their other Nothern European relatives) you really have to watch it. But then, if you're doing 60-ish grams of any sweet daily, you might want to rethink your diet.
2 ounces of liquorice per day seems like a lot, though. I'm sure a few grams is fine. Drinking ten cups of coffee a day for two weeks will likely cause similar issues, that doesn't mean one or two cups every day is harmful.
Dr. Hibbert: Another broccoli-related death.
Marge: But I thought broccoli was—
Dr. Hibbert: Oh yes. One of the deadliest plants on Earth. Why, it tries to warn you itself with its terrible taste.
I was starting to get worried that I was the only one. There should be laws prohibiting the placement of the word candy anywhere near the word liquorice. It's the worst form of false advertisement I've come across. Candy is supposed to taste good!
That childhood trauma is still with me to this day. I feel disgust and anger at the mention of liquorice.
Black licorice is one of those foods that is polarizing. People either absolutely love it or think it’s vile and shouldn’t be legal. I don’t think I’ve ever encountered someone who is ambivalent about it.
Humor aside: oven-roasted or pan-seared broccoli with garlic, salt, and butter tastes amazing! And depending on how much salt and butter you add, is probably way safer to eat than black liquorice.
Another variation, which my family really enjoys is: cut fresh broccoli into small florets; toss with olive oil and (optionally) salt/pepper; roast in oven at high temp until desired softness.
I tried butter with my broccoli once, and I found it tasted unpleasantly fatty. (And I'm no stranger to fatty foods.)
Anethole, one of the major flavour components of liquorice, is shared among a range of popular cooking herbs and spices.
Milder-tasting fennel goes great with loads of cooking, it's quite common to chop up a fennel root to add to slow-cook roasts / braises, or sprinkle fennel seeds over roasts and mix into dry rubs.
Anise has a stronger flavour than fennel, which lends itself to stocks, sauces and curries.
Less commonly you'll see liquorice root itself used in cooking, I haven't used it myself but I don't see why it wouldn't work - if balanced out and seasoned properly.
edit: Of course, just pan frying a slab of black liquorice with salt and butter would get mixed reactions, personally I'd find it overpowering, like eating straight up peppercorns even though they work well in moderation as a seasoning.
I don’t really buy that it makes that much of a difference. As a child I hated all forms of broccoli, could barely stomach it. Now that I’ve grown older I find even the plain steamed stuff edible. While I certainly like it prepped like you described, it still in the end has the taste of broccoli in it. I have a hard time imagining someone who hates the vegetable caring about how it was prepared.
It probably makes more of a difference if you kind-of liked it to start with. I will happily munch on broccoli and other green veg out of choice, but it can taste a bit plain. If you salt and butter it, it brings out the flavour, which is a good thing if you like the underlying taste.
I've always wondered if it's something like cilantro. They've identified a gene that makes cilantro taste soapy to some. Maybe there's something similar with licorice since I've noticed many people seem to have a strong negative reaction to it. (I find the flavor mild but interesting, like vanilla.)
Apparently that's not known to science, but I feel certain that it's genetic, innate and not learned. It's inconceivable that I'll ever "acquire" a tolerance for that vile inedible substance. My partner loves it though.
The flavour of licorice is, to my palate, many things, all of them unpleasant, but not "mild" at all.
I stongly suspect genetic factors, the way that some people find coriander / cilantro a strong, unpleasant taste. After all,licorice is a poison (as per the parent article), so a gene to detect and reject it as inedible has value.
I’ve wondered the same about grapefruit and bitterness as well.
I’ve compared relative bitterness of things to a grapefruit. My partner thinks grapefruit is less bitter than beer, or many items I consider barely bitter at all. Yet I find grapefruit to be incredibly bitter, out doing almost everything.
Is the flavor of grapefruit primarily bitterness? I guess that does sound right, but it was initially surprising to me, because I cannot stand grapefruit, but I very much enjoy all manner of strong coffee and bitter beers like IPAs.
Not GP but sharing the distaste for liquorice, and it extends to fennel and anise, though I can stomach the latter in small quantities as it has other flavor things going on.
> "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 personally known construction workers who live off of three square meals of gas station junk food for weeks at a time.
I'm not sure if I'm reading this correctly but this might also be one of those cases where the English language didn't help in the slightest:
"Red liquorice" is not what a German/Dutch/Scandinavian person would call liquorice. It's just red soft candy. It doesn't contain the same active ingredients.
So "switching from red to black liquorice" is in fact just a complete switch of diet, not a slight change at all.
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.
Why not. Groundskeeper (manual labor) at 50, when you could presumably start that job at 16. At 16, anything over 40 (visible signs of aging) is an ol’timer
Especially when you have a job that uses a lot of seasonal teenage labor. You end up with one group of employees who is "young" (16-early 20s) and works there in the summer, and one group that is "old" (25+) and works there year round.
We ban accounts that post like this. I don't want to ban you. Would you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and take the intended spirit of the site to heart? Obviously you're a good contributor here but the community is fragile and comments like these just destroy it. I'm sure that you're not out setting fires in your neighborhood, or punching strangers in the nose, so please don't do the equivalent here.
If any of you drink Traditional Medicinals or Yogi brand teas when you're sick (Throat Coat, Cold Care, etc), note that many of them contain licorice root and therefore glycyrrhizic acid. It drives me crazy that there weren't more prominent warnings on these because people tend to drink dozens of cups a day when they're sick, which can be dangerous for certain people
I always knew the Dutch Apekoppen or 'banana monkeys' were the perfect way to enjoy the dangerous black stuff. The mix of high potassium banana with the lethal liquorice makes it both delicious and safe
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").
I don't see what's frivolous about it. I hate liquorice but had no idea it was dangerous to consume in quantity,a nd in general I'm quite health/diet conscious.
it's frivolous because it's silly to think that eating a large amount of anything with total disregard for healthy nutrition won't result in some kind of unhealthy outcome
I think the difference is between "eating a lot of this will make you feel bad" and "eating a lot of this will make you ill and possibly kill you".
Those are quite different levels of unhealthy outcome. The trouble is, people don't think something sold as a candy would fall into the second category.
Here in the UK people would call for the government to regulate that it must be labelled. Then if it wasn't then a lawsuit might be brought. But first port of call is just to get it changed.
Case in point, the off-maligned McDonald's woman. Take a look at the burns that woman sustained and the facts of the case to see how much of a hit job that was.
Eh, I dunno. The default react to a lot of things here on HN is "talk to a lawyer". It feels very different to cultire here in the UK where lawsuits are seen as a last resort.
I don’t know, seems reasonable to me. How many people on the street would know when asked what the safe dosage of liquorice is? Guess most would say it’s no worse than any sugary candy. Is it not similar to an allergy?
The inverse to "not safe" isn't "good for their health", but "safe" (or at least not less safe than one would expect - i.e. that much sweet liquorice is also going to have a bunch of sugar, which is both widely known and documented on the packaging), which is more reasonable to think.
Alternately, if you're a woman with hypertension, ask your doctor to prescribe you some spironolactone to take along with your licorice.
It's a potassium-sparing diuretic that was originally developed as a blood pressure drug. Since hyperkalemia is a potential side effect of spiro, licorice consumption can mitigate that. And as for why you should only take it if you're a woman... well, I guess men can take it, but they wouldn't like the fact that it suppresses your testosterone into the ground.
The condition -- not mentioned in the article -- is Apparent Mineralocorticoid Excess (AME). It is something that we read about 20 years ago in physiology textbook but I have yet to ever see in real life.
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.
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...
Fwiw, high doses of theobromine feel like very high doses of caffeine, but with much more anxiety. So, if you were bouncing off the walls and couldn't sit down or sleep for 24+ hours, that would be theobromine.
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 form should be "behind the counter" and somewhat strictly controlled because humans can't be trusted with Caffeine doses in pill form and overdoses are more common than a lot of people think.
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.)
> 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.
I find this funny. I don't have a soda habit (I do not enjoy drinking it regularly, but a couple times a month, maybe, is nice) but I drink a lot of black coffee! I love the taste, and even though I grind beans on a per-cup basis, and my kettle takes a while to get hot, and there is some cleanup involved, it doesn't stop me whatsoever. If I didn't like the taste, and needed milk/sugar, maybe things would be a different story...
I eat more than my fair share of dark chocolate, so I took a look at that. The toxic levels are _a lot_ of chocolate, and I can't even imagine consuming anywhere near the lethal levels.
That said, I think the black licorice case here also falls into the "levels I can't even imagine" category.
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<= be dangerous".
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 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.
I get your point and I personally do consider the dietary habits of many Americans outright insane (though it has to be said that many may have not as much "choice" to eat more healthy, since healthy food appears to have become a inaccessible privilege for many).
However, I would (in periods) eat up to 500~700 grams of this stuff myself. Not quite what you could call a small amount by any measure. Still, not a single health issue. I'm over 40.
What I think is the bigger problem here is a sensationalized and alarmist presentation of an individual case, where supposedly a "medical" explanation is given for how licorice was the culprit. In reality there might be many other (and possibly more significant) factors involved.
I think that what pisses me off most here, is that the BCC (hiding under a protective cover of presenting "news", while pursuing more clicks), implicitly (and probably unintentionally) more or less is giving false "medical advice" to readers who just don't know any better (unless they come from a culture where licorice is popular).
> healthy food appears to have become a inaccessible privilege for many
Is that really the case? I live in Eastern Europe. Unhealthy food is inaccessible privilege for many. Instead I eat stews of legumes, which are healthy, and ridiculously cheap. I never understood this "healthy food is more expensive" thing, it most definitely is not the case here. All sorts of legumes, vegetables, and the ingredients to make healthy food are all very cheap, in comparison to pizza, or junk food, etc. which are expensive and I actually cannot financially live on them.
I am also situated in (but not originally from) Eastern Europe. On a personal level I pretty much completely agree with your opinion.
However, that might be in part because I like to take time to prepare food and actually know how to cook. One of the things I love most about Eastern Europe, is that cooking is an art that's not yet (completely) lost on the majority of people (or at least not the female half of it). Be that because of traditional values, a taste/love for quality food (and even knowing what good food tastes like in the first place), or merely a direct consequence of poverty, it still is a quality that should never be underestimated. I firmly believe that many in the West literally no longer know what they are missing.
While growing up, I definitely got the impression that even basic cooking skills became increasing less common knowledge among younger generations in most of Western Europe (I've heard it's even worse for the USA). Arguably it also deteriorated in Eastern Europe, but certainly not to the same extend.
You are right, it isn't just about cost alone. It's also people no longer knowing how to make (healthy) food themselves anymore (or just not from basic ingredient). That said, I myself have been many times in situations (while living in Western Europe) where eating shitty food ended up a lot cheaper than cooking a proper meal. For anyone unable to cook, that will certainly be even worse.
While it might be more of a philosophical question/opinion, one could ask to which extend it's about availability (both referring to ingredients and knowledge) and to which extend it's a question of (bad) choices. It could even be argued that it's the relative luxury (even spoiled behavior) that makes people eat shitty. Marketing, time constraints, and probably a number of other factors might also be to blame (to varying degrees).
Either way, from the statistics I've seen (which should of course always be treated with skepticism), it does at least appear that the poor part of the (Western) demographic eat significantly more unhealthy than the more affluent part. I have often seen the prices of quality food being used as an argument for that trend.
I have to admit, that as someone who can cook a meal out of almost nothing (and at times literally was forced to), I always have mixed feelings about such claims. Still, I did experience myself that living on a budget and cooking from basics was actually a lot easier in Eastern Europe than it was (for me) in Western Europe. It might not have been only about price and availability, but I'm pretty sure that it was a significant factor (for me). A lack of skills sure wasn't a factor in my case. Time constraints neither, since the were the same for me in both situations/locations.
I have no idea about the availability of legumes or the like in such places. I know that there are street markets where you could buy them, at least in Central and South America.
I honestly do not believe making stews of any legumes is a difficult task; it is fairly easy. It is time consuming though, but in such cases I just cook, say, a stew of lentils for 3 days (amount-wise).
It is pretty sad that people in the West "don't know any better". They only have to pick up very basic skills and do some planning. I have been to the UK, but I forgot to check for the availability of ingredients as I did not stay for long, and during my stay I lived on buns, salami, and butter. :D
As I already mentioned, I do agree with your opinion in general, have mixed feelings about the whole subject, and I certainly do agree with the situation being pretty sad.
For what it's worth, I did realize something while thinking about all this. While I regularly make stews or sarma for several days, I somehow find it harder imagining myself doing that while in Holland. It clearly isn't very rational, but I am clueless what makes the difference. I think I can rule out cultural habits or pressure, for I never gave much of a s#!$ about doing what other people do (or even fitting in at all). Still, no idea what it is that does make the difference.
As for street markets, I know they are (still) common in (large parts of) Eastern Europe, Central and South America and indeed most parts of the world. However, in Holland those have pretty much all but disappeared (competed away by the convenience of supermarkets), with the exception of maybe some larger cities. Even there, it's often more specialty/quality/artisan products for sale. I still remember a time when I went to the market because it was cheaper, but I very much doubt that's still the case now (in Holland).
I honestly don't know if the UK is similar (or worse) than Holland. No personal experience with that regarding USA either. But from what I've heard, it's pretty much supermarkets and convenience stores all the way for most of the country (which could explain a thing or two).
One thing I did notice from more recent events here (in Eastern Europe): once supermarkets manage to sabotage/undermine local (street) markets, it often is bad news for quality, choice and pricing. These conglomerates don't give a shit about what they sell, as long as it makes them (more) money. To be more specific, I have seen supermarkets first expand their selection and drop prices to "outperform" local markets (often in unfair ways), only to strip selection and raise prices after local shops went out of business.
I think a similar thing happened in Holland, just in a more subtly and gradual way. But there it started at least some 30~40 years ago. Extrapolate from that, I guess.
I did some looking into what made black licorice taste so good and to see if enjoying it was genetic. I was surprised to find out it can be toxic. All of these years my grandfather and I have been poisoning each other. Guess we should celebrate we survived it with a pint of sarsaparilla.
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).
Liquorice is one of those things like cilantro that's highly polarizing. You either love it or you deeply, passionately despise it. I too would tend to assume there's a genetic component, though I don't know.
It does make for a convenient economy of people who will eat the black jellybeans from others' bags :)
> An acquired taste ... You have to learn to like it.
Why? it tastes inedible, repulsive and vile to me. I'm happy for your tastes, but people tend to either like licorice from an early age, or never do. The preference seems strongly innate, not "acquired". Why put myself through something horrid that my body does not want and never will?
I wonder if it is like cilantro. It tastes like soap to me, but my wife loves it. Apparently there is a physiological reason for that. Maybe it is similar with black licorice.
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.
Why doubt it so much? "It's genetic" would be the simplest explanation why the preference so fixed and polarising. And also why it's concentrated in some geographic regions.
Bollocks. There are a lot of people who regularly consume dangerous amounts of salt, ultimately resulting in heart disease in the long term. Water, maybe not so common, but among runners or during heat waves people get sick from overconsumption. Neither will somehow change taste, although it's hard to consume an acutely lethal amount of salt because it simply doesn't taste good in concentration.
People with healthy lifestyles will feel when they're having too much licorice for their own good. This was a person with a poor diet in general and possibly didn't notice the negative effects of his overconsumption because he was already used to high blood pressure, shitting salsa and having his heart play math rock.
Excess salt is complicated and likely only dangerous to some people and it's not nearly the same thing as directly poisoning you to death. And for water you had to talk about exceptional circumstances like runners for a reason. In a heat wave I'd say it's not the water itself at fault either. You're still in danger if you drink less of it too.
> 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.
> Excess salt is complicated and likely only dangerous to some people and it's not nearly the same thing as directly poisoning you to death*
What does it mean to "directly poison to death"? Licorice is harmful if ever by causing potassium deficiency which can lead to heart disease among a range of other easily noticeable symptoms. It doesn't "directly poison you to death" in any sense that consuming a lot of salt or water doesn't; you overconsume it and it causes a harmful chemical imbalance in the body.
> And for water you had to talk about exceptional circumstances
Let's talk about exceptional...this guy, according to the journal, "had a poor diet, consisting primarily of several packages of candy daily" and that "3 weeks earlier [to the cardiac arrest], he had switched the type of candy he was eating [to a licorice]". So basically no source of potassium in his diet to begin with, and then three weeks after switching to a different type of candy that may in itself cause hypokalemia he suffered a heart failure, somehow without noticing any of the rather obvious symptoms associated with hypokalemia. That is exceptional.
> That's quite a claim, especially if we consider the possibility of low-sugar licorice. I think it requires some evidence.
What does sugar have to do with anything? For evidence, look up any medical source on the symptoms of potassium deficiency. These are not symptoms that would pass an otherwise healthy person by.
> 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.
Reasonably, if I'm on a diet "consisting primarily of several packages of candy daily" and start experiencing any of the symptoms of potassium deficiency, I'm going to reconsider my diet. We can discard the notion that this might have been a person with a reasonable attitude towards his health in the first place.
> What does it mean to "directly poison to death"? Licorice is harmful if ever by causing potassium deficiency which can lead to heart disease among a range of other easily noticeable symptoms. It doesn't "directly poison you to death" in any sense that consuming a lot of salt or water doesn't; you overconsume it and it causes a harmful chemical imbalance in the body.
Water does directly poison you, the way I meant it.
Let's put it this way: the harmful chemical imbalance is the cause of death. This happens with too much water, and happened from the licorice here.
Salt causing long-term damage is not the same thing. That's not overdosing on salt. So I'm considering that something different.
An actual salt overdose is something that won't taste good.
> somehow without noticing any of the rather obvious symptoms associated with hypokalemia
> These are not symptoms that would pass an otherwise healthy person by.
It's not just being able to notice symptoms, it's having licorice start tasting bad to you.
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. You can tell that you should stop eating the thing.
It's very likely he noticed the symptoms and had no idea what was causing them.
> Reasonably, if I'm on a diet "consisting primarily of several packages of candy daily" and start experiencing any of the symptoms of potassium deficiency, I'm going to reconsider my diet.
> What does sugar have to do with anything?
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?
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.
> Salt causing long-term damage is not the same thing.
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?
> Yes it is. Overconsumption of salt eventually leads to health problems because of the chemical imbalance it causes.
"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".
> "This imbalance caused heart disease" is very different from "this imbalance caused me to die".
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.
> 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.
> 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.
No, hypokalemia causes your heart to stop beating. If it just caused heart disease he wouldn't be dead after a month.
> Taste is not the same thing as appetite.
Are you arguing someone will have an appetite for licorice and keep eating a lot even if it doesn't taste good? Or the opposite? I'm not following the scenario.
> 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.
I guess I misunderstood you, but if your actual argument is just that they will know something is wrong then your argument is significantly weaker than I thought. Because noticing a single symptom, with no idea of the cause, doesn't stop you from dying. Even if you make a doctor appointment it could be too late.
And I misunderstood for a good reason, because this conversation started with someone joking that they "knew" licorice was poisonous because it tasted bad. And I was talking about how that actually happens with overdoses of salt and water, but doesn't happen with licorice. So I interpreted the "feels" sentence in the way that had A) relevance to taste and B) actually disagreed with what I was saying, since you started your reply with "Bollocks".
The way you're now telling me to interpret that sentence means that your second paragraph in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24602628 has no actual connection to anything I said in the comment you were replying to. I hadn't said anything about feeling symptoms. I had just said licorice would taste good unlike salt. So I don't know why you even had a paragraph saying "symptoms would exist".
> No, hypokalemia causes your heart to stop beating. If it just caused heart disease he wouldn't be dead after a month.
No, it causes arrhythmia and high blood pressure, heart disease which may have consequences like sudden cardiac death.
> Are you arguing someone will have an appetite for licorice and keep eating a lot even if it doesn't taste good? Or the opposite? I'm not following the scenario.
I agree that you are not following. I am saying that appetite is not the same as taste.
> Because noticing a single symptom, with no idea of the cause, doesn't stop you from dying. Even if you make a doctor appointment it could be too late.
Hypokalemia is rarely fatal because the symptoms are obviously alarming
> And I misunderstood for a good reason, because this conversation started with someone joking that they "knew" licorice was poisonous because it tasted bad.
Yes, which I responded to by saying that many benign and essential substances are poisonous in the right volume.
> And I was talking about how that actually happens with overdoses of salt and water, but doesn't happen with licorice.
Which you've failed to substantiate.
> So I interpreted the "feels" sentence in the way that had A) relevance to taste and B) actually disagreed with what I was saying, since you started your reply with "Bollocks".
So you misunderstood my argument.
> The way you're now telling me to interpret that sentence means that your second paragraph in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24602628 has no actual connection to anything I said in the comment you were replying to. I hadn't said anything about feeling symptoms.
Exactly, which is why I brought it up, because it's another regulator of consumption that healthy people won't ignore. You can't in good faith argue that it is only now that you understand that, because you've accepted that as the premise of my argument throughout our discussion, however confusing it with the notion that people have "inbuilt licorice systems".
> You can't in good faith argue that it is only now that you understand that
Don't call me a liar, thanks.
I really thought your premise was that "too much licorice" would be what the person felt.
Because noticing "a weird symptom" won't save your life unless you can figure out the puzzle fast enough.
> Which you've failed to substantiate.
Did you not look at the article I linked? "Very few specific appetites for particular nutrients have been identified in humans. The most robustly identified are salt appetite/sodium appetite."
Also here's why it's not entirely ridiculous to think something like that about licorice: People will figure out associations over time, so you can in fact have a learned ability to detect too much licorice. That's what I thought you were arguing. So I was trying to argue that this particular situation wasn't enough to learn such an association. I didn't think you were saying something so ridiculous that I must "think quite poorly" of you.
> I really thought your premise was that "too much licorice" would be what the person felt.
You just said that you thought my premise "had A) relevance to taste", and that's what I don't think you could argue in good faith.
> Because noticing "a weird symptom" won't save your life unless you can figure out the puzzle fast enough.
Yes, there's always someone oblivious enough to die for the most ridiculous reasons. Hence people die from water poisoning for chugging down amounts of water that defy common sense, people that die because they don't have the mental capacity to realize that eating spoonfuls of salt is harmful, and apparently people that die because there is no question in their minds whether a licorice based diet might be harmful.
> Did you not look at the article I linked? "Very few specific appetites for particular nutrients have been identified in humans. The most robustly identified are salt appetite/sodium appetite."
That doesn't substantiate the idea that the perceived taste of salt changes as you eat more of it.
> Also here's why it's not entirely ridiculous to think something like that about licorice: People will figure out associations over time, so you can in fact have a learned ability to detect too much licorice. That's what I thought you were arguing.
Forgive me for not understanding your point, but if on one hand you assume that I'm arguing for the existence of "inbuilt licorice systems" (a really dumb point that a dumb person would make) and on the other hand that I'm arguing for the existence of a learned association (an interesting point that's at least worthy of examination, though ultimately not my point), you aren't making things easy for me.
Licorice is toxic in relatively low quantities though.
> If you’re 40 or older, eating 2 ounces of black licorice a day for at least two weeks could land you in the hospital with an irregular heart rhythm or arrhythmia.
That phrasing so annoyingly waffley. "Could" might mean "if you're already predisposed to arrhythmia" or "if you're somewhat allergic to the ingredients".
As it stands, I feel that sentence could apply to any atypical food, like pickled herring or durian fruit.
Could you describe the flavor? I understand there are differences in whether people but I'd love to hear if we are experiencing a similar and evaluating it differently or what.
I can withstand the flavor but not sure I would ever seek it out.
I find it incredible that some people enjoy liquorice (the stuff tastes vile to me).
Ironically, I know some people that think the same of me when I tell them I love cilantro.
Not, is from the root of a legume. Anything that substitutes cereal flour by legume flour is gluten free. Same if you just mash the dried root to extract the flavor, instead to eat the candy bar.
The problem is that legume flour is normally very toxic in raw, and therefore more complicated to produce.
Legumes have a much better reputation than Solanaceae, but they are still able to build some serious chemical weapons. Licorice belongs to the same tribe as Colutea, a genus used to poison mammals. Is the only genus seen as edible in its group if I'm not wrong. I don't know if it can be adulterated.
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 sweet we had in France since always (from what I saw, you usually have the ones who love out and the onces who hate it, with a rather empty "meh" section)
> 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 think non-foods are things like sweeteners which we literally can't digest and just go straight through us. They're not nutritious, and thus arguably aren't food at all (although you can eat them).
A cup is always by volume, so you can’t really criticize it based on that. A metric cup is 250mL, imperial is ~230mL it’s nowhere near as “shitty” as “a bag”, it’s just a unit of measure that you are unfamiliar with. It’s used quite a lot in baking.
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 habit. I think this is a good example when it's both correct and not correct to say that the licorice "caused" the death.
Contrast with two examples on the two extremes:
Consider a situation when he had instead of licorice had ingested some obviously known poison: then I think it's a much more valid statement to say that "man dies from eating poison", because the idea of the poison and the idea of death are very close together.
Consider a different situation where the man was smoking one pack of cigarettes _per month_ or _per year_. Then it's not as obvious to say "man dies from smoking". The smoking probably contributed to the death in various complex ways.
So you could say that "man dies due from hypokalemia due to excessive licorice consumption not counterbalanced by having an otherwise healthy diet" which is possibly more nuanced, and possibly more (or less) helpful depending on what your purpose is to clarify or simplify things.
Thanks for sharing this article, I find this a good and fairly apolitical educational example that I can use when talking about complex causal relations in the future: how cause and effect can be conflated in both positive and negative ways depending on who you are talking to, what you are talking about, and what the purpose of the discussion is.
> So you could say that "man dies due from hypokalemia due to excessive licorice consumption not counterbalanced by having an otherwise healthy diet" which is possibly more nuanced, and possibly more (or less) helpful depending on what your purpose is to clarify or simplify things.
Could you?
Do you have anything to back up the idea that an otherwise healthy diet would counteract the very specific problem of hypokalemia?
I am a huge fan of liquorice and have been for years but had no idea it could cause hypertension. Since my favorite type is the really salty Dutch kind, I did wonder if that made it worse. However, one of the symptoms is hypokalemia (low potassium) and I think the Dutch salt is potassium based so maybe it's actually helpful. He said, optimistically.
So as an aside - I've had some salted liquorice in Sweden, and the closest I can't compare this experience to is having drain cleaner poured on your tongue, and then rubbed in with some sandpaper. But hey, we eat pickled mushrooms and meat in jelly, so what do I know ;-)
Aaah, but it's like having drain cleaner poured on your tongue and rubbed in with sandpaper, but in a way that for whatever weird reason makes you want to try it again. And again. It's oddly tasty, and you keep thinking "it can't possibly be as bad as the last time" and then it is. But still hauntingly tasty.
Weird experience. I want to spit it out, but I also want another piece.
On a side note, the salt used (ammonium chloride) is also a primary component of soldering iron tip cleaner. You can buy blocks of the stuff for that purpose, it's highly effective (though extremely aggressive, so to be used only after the wet sponge and brass wool have failed to remove the oxide). Works about like you'd expect it to, given the taste.
Wait until you try the Finnish salty liquorice alcohol called Salmiakkikossu. I love the salty candy but this is foul :) I read once that it was best described as old tractor tires marinated in moose piss :)
Oooh I really like salmiak candy, so that actually sounds pretty good to me. It's really interesting that love for salty licorice & salmiak is concentrated in only a handfull of countries.
Apparently a large amount of produced liquorice goes to flavor cigarettes, up to 4% of the weight of a cigarette's tobacco blend is liquorice[0]. So I would wager that smoking liquorice has killed more people than eating it (not that that tidbit of info helps in the case of the man in the article).
On one hand, you can compress that to once per minute and get a reasonable amount of sleep. A quick and guilt-inducing search informs me that one Matthew Tybor smoked a cigarette in a mere 36.44 seconds, so I guess that's plausible if we ignore the carbon monoxide?
On the other hand, nicotine is a stimulant, so maybe you wouldn't need to?
Let me put it this way - based on the article I cited, removing licorice from cigarettes would probably result in a measurable drop in addiction and cancer rates (perhaps single digit %, but still measureable).
evolution has armed us with a way of detecting food that is not good for us but in this case since its all blended with sugar and other dietary "desirable" ingredients it may fool us.
The strongest liquorice in Germany has to be labelled (translated word-by-word) as "Strong liquorice, extra strong, liquorice for adults - not children's liquorice" [0]
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.
Ah, see, I love black liquorice. I always thought people who hate it just lack an adventurous palate, but at least it was an opportunity to relieve them of their black jellybeans.
It turns out I was simply ignoring a clear biological signal that the substance is dangerous, in the pursuit of pleasurable sensation.
Ah well. Wouldn't be the first time, and won't be the last!
I love black licorice, and have for years. A few years back, I started to notice I'd get a headache if I ate some.
My wife told me she heard it was connected to higher blood pressure, which I was unable to confirm despite some self-testing. Still, the headaches persist. So I've been laying off.
Reminds me of the folks who get sick drinking too much green tea - like, gallons a day.
Seems like general good advice is... don't dominate your diet with shitty food or even a single good food. This seems pretty obvious, but people are weird :)
I've been thinking I wanted to incorporate it into my next powerlifting meet as a game-day PED because I can absolutely notice my blood pressure going up while eating it. Great now I need to write a grant proposal for the study…
I stay far far away from competition as a powerlifter/bodybuilder. You pretty much need PED's just to compete, and not even to compete well, PED's + Insane training and Diet for that.
Eh, the drug tested feds in my area (NYC) are reasonably clean. My non-cheater friends do well enough in local and even national meets that I'm pretty confident in that. I think having an untested outlet for competition (with better cash prizes than the tested feds) helps.
this guy was eating a bag of sweets (candies) a day. had recently started a licorice binge and collapsed eating a fast food lunch. I think his nutrition was all sorts of fucked up and if the licorice didn't get him the coronary heart disease would have
> A few weeks before his death, he switched from red fruit-flavoured twists to another type made with black liquorice... Further investigation revealed a recent change to a liquorice-containing candy as the likely cause of his hypokalemia.
I don't like black licorice, but I love red licorice. I too blame his change from red to black licorice.
"Another doctor, Dr Andrew L Lundquist, agreed in the report that the liquorice was to blame" it really wasn't. The man was to blame (if there was any blame at all, because addictive behaviour doesn't really mesh with "blame"), and the liquorice was just the last addiction he'd ever have.
People die from all sorts of things. My daughter-in-law did a rotation in pathology, and investigated the death from sepsis of an otherwise healthy 30-something male. He had hundreds of filthy fragments of wire in his gut, apparently from the wire brush he used to clean his grill.
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.
Through HN the link seems to be posted each day with the updates, but if you haven't had the chance to catch it, there are at least two sources for the daily:
We actually learned about this in med school last week, but I never thought it actually happened to people... Licorice contains glycyrrhetinic acid which inhibits the conversion of cortisol to cortisone. If you have too much cortisol floating around because of this, that cortisol starts activating receptors in your kidneys that are normally activated by aldosterone. This in turn increases your sodium resorption and potassium excretion, so you get high blood pressure and low potassium which can cause arrhythmias. It's called the Syndrome of Apparent Mineralocorticoid Excess and is a usually genetic problem with the enzyme that breaks down cortisol.