For those of us with a sweet tooth Gummy Bears have been a favourite for years. The fruity sweet flavours and immensely chew-able texture has made them famous. But if you need to watch your sugar intake the normal Gummy Bear is a guilty pleasure, that was until a delicious variant of the Gummy Bear appeared a few years ago, the Haribo Sugar Free Gummy Bear. Unfortunately, instead of becoming a favourite they quickly became infamous. With the unfortunate side effect of completely cleaning one’s insides out the sugar free variety of this squishy bear shaped candy soon developed an unfortunate reputation, and a collection of some of the funniest reviews on Amazon.
The hilarious Amazon Reviews read like a digestive horror story with descriptions of the side effects that include ‘Then came the, uh, flatulence. Heavens to Murgatroyd, the sounds, like trumpets calling the demons back to Hell’ or ‘I gingerly walk into my home and up the stairs, all the while the sounds of a horribly executed exorcism are playing out in my twisted up gut. The second that I touch porcelain what can only be compared to dropping a Mentos into a 2 liter of Diet Coke followed. Unfortunately, this was just the beginning. Over the past 3 hours, the eruptions have been coming at a steady pace. My toilet/ass must be feeling what the Allied forces felt like against the German Blitzkrieg.’
The ingredient at the centre of these many tales of rear end woe is the nifty low calorie sugar Lycasin, a product based on the fake sugar known as Maltitol. Maltitol is a sugar alcohol that is chemically altered in the lab, alterations that make it practically indigestible by the body, hence it gives over none of its sugary goodness as calories that can be burnt by the body. Only a small amount of the sugar alcohol is digested in the stomach and the remaining sugar causes the stomach to want to flush it out, flooding you stomach with water that rushes to the colon and out in a rather violent sounding fashion. This is instant diarrhea with as few as 20 of these sugar free Gummi bears.
The only question is Why? Why are these dangerously seductive candy on the market? Is this some form of sick torture device devised to generate humorous Amazon reviews? All we know here at Highpants is that any candy that includes (now) a warning about the laxative effects isn’t for us.
Reference: Gizmodo – What Turned Sugar-Free Candies Into Super-Laxatives?
