This is your reminder (or maybe your introduction) that herbal candies were not created as candy but as palatable ways to take medicine and that eating them in mass amounts like the artificial fruit junk is bad for you. Not because of the sugar, but because they're still medicine https://twitter.com/APHealthScience/status/1308880670006145031

Horehound candy? Medicine.
Ginger candy? Meds
Licorice? Meds.
Peppermints?! Still fucking meds. Candies made and flavored primarily or exclusively from herbs are fucking delicious. They can also overdose you in ways no one knows to look for until the autopsy.

You can experience dangerously low blood pressure, you can miscarry on enough fucking horehound candy (do NOT self induce by eating horehound. You need other herbs in that brew) you can end up taking poops you wished would just take you out of this world. You can tank your libedo

As a General Rule I don't recommend people eating more than 1 small bag of herbal candies every 10 days or so. Just 1-2 pieces at a time, not more than 2-3 times a day. And if you can, mix them up. Make a mix of strong flavors you can pick from. Cranberry, quince, currant. Trust.

If you or a family member have been munching super hard on herbal candies, especially during Covid, do a solid and tell your doctor. Ask them to do a blood panel if you can afford it to make sure you're not deliciously nibbling yourself to death.

Today's PSA has been brought to you by my teenage dream of being an assassin, my obsession with understanding when and how things interconnect from food anthropology to biology, and the letter L.

For Licorice.