Black licorice may look and taste like an innocent treat, but this candy has a dark side. On Sept. 23, 2020, doctors reported that black licorice was the culprit in the death of a 54-year-old man in Massachusetts. How could this be? Overdosing on licorice sounds more like a twisted tale than a plausible fact.
I am a toxicologist and author of the book “Pleased to Meet Me: Genes, Germs, and the Curious Forces That Make Us Who We Are.” I have a long-standing interest in how chemicals in food and the environment affect the body and mind.
When something seemingly harmless like licorice is implicated in a death, we are reminded of the famous proclamation by Swiss physician Paracelsus, considered the father of toxicology: “All things are poison, and nothing is without poison; the dosage alone makes it so a thing is not a poison.”
