How Much Candy Would Kill You?

This week Reactions is looking at the chemistry of Halloween candy, and how much of it can kill you. Ah, sweet, sugary, science!

For those of you out there who want to figure out the oral LD50 for yourself fill in the variable "W" with your own weight in pounds:

(W*13.5)/9.3 = PIECES OF FUN SIZED CANDY

(W*13.5)/1.5 = PIECES OF CANDY CORN

Post your results down in the comments. Happy Halloween!

Reality check: Experts agree that you'd never be able to ingest enough candy to hit the LD50 of sucrose in humans (since you have to eat it all at once, which you wouldn't be able to do without vomiting). Also, the average person in the U.S. eats candy about 2-3 times per week. As with everything, moderation is key!

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Writer & Producer:
Kirk Zamieroski

Executive Producer:
Adam Dylewski

Scientific consultants:
Hans Plugge, Ph.D.
Kyle Nackers
Alison Le

SOURCES:


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Reactions is produced by the American Chemical Society.

[ACSReactions]

Happy Halloween everyone!

A few things to remember. These calculations were down "back of the envelope" style as a fun mental exercise using the average nutritional information from the PopSugar article. If you are looking for a truly accurate calculation you will have to follow up with a nutrition and poison expert but the simple equations in the description we hope are entertaining enough to get a rough ball park of the sheer amount of candy you'd have to eat.

Personally I'd much rather be in the test group looking for the oral LD50 of Pumpkin Pie....

[nathanreilly]

I'm not into sugar-rush chocolate bars anymore, I have decided, chocolate gives me hard stomach problems, and causes the swelling inside of me. The only thing I can have is little bit of soft-baked fibre, doesn't have that much sugar, in Fibre 1 bars, I eat those, and nothing else. To keep me going. Also little bit of ice cream doesn't hurt as much, from DQ, as long I chose a mini soft-serve Blizzard of any kind of flavors, I like, a little sugar doesn't hurt as little, as long I take too much.

[bobfl]

If you try to east that much, surely you would end up vomiting.

[qwertyuiopmnbvcxz]

I find it VERY hard to believe that 160 miniature MnMs is going to kill me

[ArchOfWinter]

Who in the right mind would even eat double digits amounts of candy corn in the first place?
M&M is the candy you have to worry about overdosing on.

[PatrikRasch]

Looool the ending. Great video, well done :D

[vinayvyraveraja]

How about for the next video, you make how much of heavy metals I can consume before I die of metal poisoning.

[Pyrehz]

Here before this video goes on the top trending



Anyone else?

[mm-ezxn]

im afraid guys... i should be dead right now.

[BIGBWAR]

I prefer memes more than real life candy **insert a ken bone meme in this comment**

[theinternetstolemysoulbuti]

I only stock Butter Fingers this Halloween. A kid stabbed me last year after recieving a handful of Hersheys Kisses.

[hemoglobinco]

theres approximately 500 pieces of candy corn in those full sized bags so i think death by candy corn is more difficult than it seems, but still a lot easier than one would expect. just to be clear, death by candy corn is approximately 3 full sized bags of candy corn.

[kathiamuniz]

thanks it makes me not want to eat candy anymore

[ATasteOfLife]

Lol Furious Pete ate that huge Nutella jar, I think it was like 5 kg?

[InsaneMetalSoldier]

This doesn't work with Matt Stonie, he'll never die from this.

[weebweeb]

i always eat 100 peices of candy everyday my mouth doesn't hurt, my teeth is white and it doesn't have any piece of black idk why i haven't die yet lol

[lawrencelegaspi]

I ate a lot of chocolate right now and this past few days(to be exact, i think 3 to 4 packs of chocolate I ate a lot because I'm enjoying eating them ..and my mom was shocked because she saw that I ate a lot of chocolates and she said i might have diabetes because of that😷).And now i'm worried if i have diabetes 😷

Please help meee 😥..i know this video is 2 years ago ..but i hope you can Still able To reply to my comment and help me or suggest anything to know if i have diabetes right noww pleaseee ..i need your suggestion sir/ma'am ..hope you Don't ignore . I think I'm gonna die because diabetes is very dangerous and it's in our blood 😷😥

[MoB]

177.5 pieces of candy and 1100 pieces of candy corn id die from the sheer volume of food not the sucrose toxicity

[vishhb]

😦😯😧 I’m never eat candy again my bad but they so good 😓😥

[davidgreg]

So you’re saying I’m cheating death right now apparently 💀