The safe upper limit of licorice consumption, and why pregnant women may be at particularly high risk.
Is Licorice Good for You?
4.4/5 - (25 votes)
What about licorice? The kind that’s made out of actual licorice root—not the artificially-flavored corn syrup stuff. So, like, health food store licorice. Harmful, harmless, or helpful?
Licorice can be quite harmful. The natural compound that makes licorice so sweet can affect kidney function. Just four candy cigars for two weeks landed this woman in the hospital—a physician no less. She recovered completely, but others have not been so lucky.
Now, there is some evidence that the same compound may be effective at killing human prostate cancer cells in a Petri dish, so one could argue that these people were just eating too much of a good thing. But the safety window is so narrow. The safe upper limit of black licorice intake is six grams; so that’s like only six inches of licorice.
And it may be especially detrimental for pregnant women. Kids born to moms who ate a lot of licorice when pregnant suffer from diminished speech, visual, and memory skills, as well as two to three times the odds of having attention, rule-breaking, and aggression problems.
To see any graphs, charts, graphics, images, and quotes to which Dr. Greger may be referring, watch the above video. This is just an approximation of the audio contributed by veganmontreal.
Please consider volunteering to help out on the site.
- CJEM. 2009 Jan;11(1):94-6. Glycyrrhizic acid toxicity caused by consumption of licorice candy cigars. Johns C.
- Y. T. Yo, G. S. Shieh, K. F. Hsu, C. L. Wu, and A. L. Shiau. Licorice and licochalcone-A induce autophagy in LNCaP prostate cancer cells by suppression of Bcl-2 expression and the mTOR pathway. J. Agric. Food. Chem., 57(18):8266{8273, 2009.
- K. Raikkonen, A. K. Pesonen, K. Heinonen, J. Lahti, N. Komsi, J. G. Eriksson, J. R. Seckl, A. L. Jarvenpaa, and T. E. Strandberg. Maternal Licorice Consumption and Detrimental Cognitive and Psychiatric Outcomes in Children. Am. J. Epidemiol., 170(9):1137-1146, 2009.
Image thanks to CandyBlog
What about licorice? The kind that’s made out of actual licorice root—not the artificially-flavored corn syrup stuff. So, like, health food store licorice. Harmful, harmless, or helpful?
Licorice can be quite harmful. The natural compound that makes licorice so sweet can affect kidney function. Just four candy cigars for two weeks landed this woman in the hospital—a physician no less. She recovered completely, but others have not been so lucky.
Now, there is some evidence that the same compound may be effective at killing human prostate cancer cells in a Petri dish, so one could argue that these people were just eating too much of a good thing. But the safety window is so narrow. The safe upper limit of black licorice intake is six grams; so that’s like only six inches of licorice.
And it may be especially detrimental for pregnant women. Kids born to moms who ate a lot of licorice when pregnant suffer from diminished speech, visual, and memory skills, as well as two to three times the odds of having attention, rule-breaking, and aggression problems.
To see any graphs, charts, graphics, images, and quotes to which Dr. Greger may be referring, watch the above video. This is just an approximation of the audio contributed by veganmontreal.
Please consider volunteering to help out on the site.
- CJEM. 2009 Jan;11(1):94-6. Glycyrrhizic acid toxicity caused by consumption of licorice candy cigars. Johns C.
- Y. T. Yo, G. S. Shieh, K. F. Hsu, C. L. Wu, and A. L. Shiau. Licorice and licochalcone-A induce autophagy in LNCaP prostate cancer cells by suppression of Bcl-2 expression and the mTOR pathway. J. Agric. Food. Chem., 57(18):8266{8273, 2009.
- K. Raikkonen, A. K. Pesonen, K. Heinonen, J. Lahti, N. Komsi, J. G. Eriksson, J. R. Seckl, A. L. Jarvenpaa, and T. E. Strandberg. Maternal Licorice Consumption and Detrimental Cognitive and Psychiatric Outcomes in Children. Am. J. Epidemiol., 170(9):1137-1146, 2009.
Image thanks to CandyBlog
Republishing "Is Licorice Good for You?"
Terms
You may republish this material online or in print under our Creative Commons licence. You must attribute the article to NutritionFacts.org with a link back to our website in your republication.
If any changes are made to the original text or video, you must indicate, reasonably, what has changed about the article or video.
You may not use our material for commercial purposes.
You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that restrict others from doing anything permitted here.
If you have any questions, please Contact Us
Title
Is Licorice Good for You?
LicenseCreative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)
Content URLDoctor's Note
For more on health concerns during pregnancy, check out these videos:
Bacon, Eggs, and Gestational Diabetes During Pregnancy
How Long to Detox From Fish Before Pregnancy?
Chamomile Tea May Not Be Safe During Pregnancy
The Wrong Way to Detox
Diet Soda and Preterm Birth
For further context, see my associated blog post: Soy milk: shake it up!
If you haven’t yet, you can subscribe to my videos for free by clicking here. Read our important information about translations here.
Previous Video
Next Video
