Why eating a sleigh’s worth of candy canes is a bad idea
Like any compound, the festive flavour of peppermint can be harmful in high doses
While peppermint appears in products year round, its star turn is at Christmas. Peppermint’s festive top billing, according to the culinary magazine Epicurious, can be traced to the seasonal craze for candy canes. Of the 1.2 billion candy canes annually produced, 90% are snapped up between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day. Beyond candy canes and merry mints, peppermint abounds in Christmas desserts, beverages, potpourri and various other yuletide offerings. A hybrid of spearmint (Mentha spicata) and water mint (Mentha aquatica), peppermint (Mentha x piperita L.) can be an invasive grinch of home gardens while also being a valuable crop globally. Several thousand tonnes of peppermint oil are produced each year, cheering with its flavor and taste. Peppermint and its oil, bearing the US Food and Drug Administration generally recognized as safe designation, enjoy jolly and benign reputations. But minty merriment does not mean there is no menace.
Malicious mint may bring to mind the Bradford sweets poisoning, which saw peppermint humbugs at the centre of 21 deaths in 1858. Peppermint was not to blame, however. Arsenic trioxide – accidentally used in place of powdered gypsum in the humbug recipe – was at fault. The rare times peppermint has been at the root of extreme harm, menthol or pulegone have been singled out as the toxins responsible.