Halloween is coming soon, which means costumes, horror movies and lots of candy. In this video, Reactions solves this weird hypothetical question: how many Halloween candies will endanger your life? find out when we explain the chemical principles behind lethal doses, sugar metabolism and corn sugar. For those who don’t give you tricks and treats, please note:
It is estimated that during Halloween this year, candy sales in the United States will reach more than $2.5 billion.
In order to maintain the weirdness of this season--today let’s see how many Halloween candies are there. If eaten at one time, it can endanger the lives of ordinary people.
If it is not the absolute sugar content, it is not called candy. Americans consume an average of about 22 teaspoons of added sugar per day, although experts recommend that men consume no more than 9 teaspoons, while women only need 6 teaspoons. Of course, all of this added sugar is not without a price.
The National Institute of Health found that about 2/3 of Americans are overweight. Although different factors cause this problem, candy will certainly affect its development.
Edible sugar, or sucrose, is a simple carbohydrate , consisting of two main parts: glucose and fructose . Just like high fructose corn syrup, our bodies break this molecule into these separate parts.
glucose passes through the liver and is easily distributed throughout the body as your cells can use it as energy. Fructose, on the other hand, stays in the liver - the only hardware in your body that can break it down into simpler parts. The liver then converts about 50% of fructose into glucose, nearly 30% of fructose into lactic acid, and the rest is stored as fat.
When you add sugar to your body, all glucose cannot be used to power your cells at once, so it is eventually transformed and stored in cells called adipocytes.
So you can see why all of these added sugars end up staying here for a long time (shown as belly).
candy can have nuts and other snacks inside, but let's focus on sugar because we assume that binge eating will kill.
As the saying goes, “Dose determines toxicity.” At a sufficiently large dose, sugar can be toxic. But how much is considered excessive?
We will need to check the oral LD50--the number of animals that can successfully kill half of the animal test population (such as mice) (LD50 showing different points).
The LD50 of sucrose is 29.7 grams per kilogram or 13.5 grams per pound. LD50 represents the toxicity of a single-use thing, and it does not guarantee death - it only kills 50% of the amount. Since these numbers represent toxicity to rats, sugar may be more or less toxic to humans.
Scientists often use this approximation because it is very unethical to obtain lethal doses of sugar or other compounds in humans for obvious reasons.
The average American weight is about 180 pounds. This means that in order to reach LD50, they will have to eat about 2440 grams of sugar--about 5.4 pounds! But what does these sugars mean to the human body?
But, as far as a trick or treating Halloween loot is concerned, what does all this sugar mean?
A regular Halloween candy contains 9.3 grams of sugar, which has about 75 calories. Therefore, in order to reach LD50, each person needs to eat an average of 262 yuan - nearly 20,000 calories! Therefore, if you want to meet the LD50 standard, you need to eat 262 yuan.
So, as for the specific Halloween corn candy, what is the situation? A piece of sugar contains about 1.5 grams of sugar, which will bring the lethal dose to 1,627 pieces.
Now you know the numbers for an ordinary person, but what about you?
In the video description, there is a convenient equation to calculate your lethal doses, including Halloween candy and corn candy.
For those who want to calculate their oral LD50, please fill in your own weight (pounds) in the variable "W".
(W*13.5)/9.3 = a piece of "fun-sized" candy
(W*13.5)/1.5 = a piece of corn candy
