Death by Twizzler

When I was recently informed that eating black licorice could kill you dead, I said "Nuh-uuhhh".  I mean, I knew that it was the third least desirable item you could get in your Halloween candy bag (behind Necco Wafers and Chowards Mints and barely ahead of loose pieces of Candy Corn and pennies) but deadly?  No way.

Well, it turns out that the natural sweetener present in the licorice plant, glycyrrhizin, in addition to being 30-50 times sweeter than sugar, can cause arrhythmia and other bad health things when consumed in large quantities.  The compound sucks the potassium out of your body resulting in or exacerbating cardiopulmonary issues - especially if you are over 40.

Wow.

For the sake of argument let's say you lack the self control that allows normal people to stop themselves from doing things well before being beckoned into the light by long dead loved ones. How much of the black chewy stuff is too much?

Just calling up Hershey's (they make Twizzlers and Good & Plenty) and asking them a question like that is just going to get you put on yet another watchlist and they are unlikely to give out manufacturing secrets to a stranger over the phone anyway. 

Before I read the FDA warning I assumed that you would need to eat a coffee table sized chunk of the sweetener every day for a year or something bizarre like that to cause problems.  Not so.  Looking into it I found that you only need to eat two ounces of the candy every day for two weeks to mess yourself up. 

Hershey's confirms the FDA's info that too much glycyrrhizin is harmful and that they actually use a mix of real licorice and anise oil.  But, since you don't know how much of each is used, prudence demands you play it safe and assume all the flavoring is licorice-plant-based (BTW, lower-grade candies like most black jelly beans sold around Easter time use solely anise).

Oh... before I go on... I am not picking on Hershey's here... They aren't the only ones in the world that make black licorice candies – they just make the most popular ones in the U.S. As a matter of fact they put glycyrrhizin information on their website along with other useful stuff about peanut allergies and whatnot.

Anyway... a fatal dose of turns out to be less than two 1-lb bags of black Twizzlers in two weeks, or about five 8-inch Twizzlers per day. Alternatively nine 6-oz boxes of Good & Plenty candies (assuming the licorice part is half the weight) appears to be all a human being can handle in a fortnight.

You can do your own calculations on how much of your favorite licorice candy you would need to commit the perfect crime... I mean, uhhh, hurt yourself... My numbers seem ridiculously low, and I am almost certain they are on the way-too-conservative side. Feel free to post a correction in the comments.

Just in case, though, I am gonna stay away from the Blackjack Chewing Gum and Snaps this year.