If you’ve never paused half-way through your third Milky Way bar and thought, “I wonder how many of these things I could eat before it kills me?” then sadly, you’re not doing it right. Luckily, the American Chemical Society’s YouTube channel, “Reaction,” is here to answer all your burning, morbid questions just in time for Halloween.
Though All Hallows’ Eve is typically a time for over-indulgence, there is indeed a point where a pillowcase full of candy can turn into a very real sugar overdose if it's consumed in one sitting.
According to the video—aptly titled “How Much Candy Would Kill You?”—it would take 1,627 pieces of candy corn and 262 fun-size candy bars and to kill a 180-pound adult, the average wait for a full-grown American. Having roughly calculated the lethal dose of sucrose for humans, Reaction found that 20,000 calories, and five-and-a-half pounds of sugar, could land the average person six feet under.
“As the old saying goes, ‘The dose makes the poison,'” the video’s narrator says. “At high enough doses, sugar can be toxic.”
According to the video, two-thirds of Americans are currently overweight, and the average citizen eats 22 teaspoons of added sugar a day, way more than the recommended serving for both men and women. Basically, while more than five pounds of sugar is intimidating, it's not totally unthinkable that someone could OD on sugar if it really came down to it.
Either way, Americans are expected to spend some $3.8 billion on Halloween candy this year, a 5 percent increase from 2015. Let’s just hope the county resists the urge to eat all that loot in one night.
[via Munchies]