Can You Overdose on Halloween Candy?
Halloween, for me, usually meant limitless candy consumption. My parents were definitely not the kind of parents that limited my candy intake to two pieces a day.
It was candy for breakfast, lunch, and dinner until it was gone.
Looking back, maybe that wasn't for the best, but could it have been deadly?
According to a Huff Post article, "Overindulging in Halloween candy is likely fine, but there’s a point where too much can be lethal. The American Chemical Society’s Reactions show released a YouTube video titled “How Much Candy Would Kill You?” in 2016 (see above), revealing that deadly dose to be 262 pieces of fun-sized Halloween candy or 1,627 pieces of candy corn, when eaten all at once."
If you're curious about how they came to this conclusion, they used something called LD50 or the median lethal dose of sugar or sucrose that is deadly for 50% of the participants in the tested group.
The article goes on to explain, "Sucrose’s LD50 is 13.5 grams per pound, and with the average person weighing 180 pounds, consuming 2,440 grams (or 5.4 pounds) of sugar can be lethal. Fun-sized pieces of candy average 9.3 grams of sugar and candy corn 1.5 grams, so a 180-pound person would need to eat 262 pieces of candy and 1,627 pieces of candy corn to reach the LD50."
I love sugar, but 262 pieces even sounds crazy to me!
If you're feeling frisky, you can calculate your own Halloween candy lethal dose by multiplying your weight in pounds by 13.5 and then dividing by 9.3 for fun-size candy bars. If you're a candy corn person (weirdos), then divide everything by 1.
In conclusion, it is possible to overdose on the sugar in Halloween candy, but highly unlikely.
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