Red licorice is candy, and nutritionally it behaves like candy. Despite its name, most red licorice sold in the United States contains no licorice root at all. Products like Twizzlers and Red Vines are made primarily from wheat flour, corn syrup, sugar, and artificial flavoring, which means they carry the same health concerns as other processed sweets. The confusion around red licorice and health stems partly from people conflating it with black licorice, which actually does contain bioactive compounds from the licorice plant, and partly from a vague sense that anything “licorice” might have medicinal properties.
What Red Licorice Actually Contains
If you flip over a package of red licorice, you won’t find licorice root or licorice extract anywhere on the ingredient list. The primary ingredients are enriched wheat flour, sugar, and corn syrup (often high-fructose corn syrup). After that come smaller amounts of citric acid, artificial flavoring, and food coloring, typically Red 40. The flavoring in red licorice is usually strawberry, cherry, or a generic fruit flavor. There is nothing from the Glycyrrhiza glabra plant, which is the actual licorice plant, involved in production.
A single serving of a popular red licorice brand runs about 140 to 160 calories, with roughly 15 to 18 grams of sugar. That’s comparable to other gummy or chewy candies. There’s almost no fat, almost no protein, and negligible amounts of vitamins or minerals. From a nutritional standpoint, red licorice is essentially empty calories shaped into a rope.
Why Red and Black Licorice Are Completely Different Health Conversations
This is the single most important distinction people miss. Black licorice, the traditional kind with a strong anise-like taste, contains glycyrrhizin, a compound extracted from licorice root. Glycyrrhizin is biologically active and, when consumed in large amounts, can cause real medical problems. It interferes with an enzyme that normally keeps the hormone cortisol from overstimulating certain receptors in the kidneys. When that enzyme is blocked, cortisol floods those receptors, leading to potassium loss and elevated blood pressure.
Consuming large quantities of black licorice can cause a syndrome that looks a lot like a condition called hyperaldosteronism, with dangerously low potassium levels and high blood pressure, even though aldosterone itself is actually suppressed.1PubMed Central. Pseudohyperaldosteronism, liquorice, and hypertension The mechanism is well documented: glycyrrhizin blocks the enzyme that would normally inactivate cortisol in kidney tissue, letting cortisol bind to mineralocorticoid receptors it shouldn’t normally access.2Endocrinology and Metabolism Clinics of North America. Licorice-Induced Hypertension and Syndromes of Apparent Mineralocorticoid Excess The FDA has warned that eating two ounces of black licorice daily for two weeks or longer can land older adults in the hospital with heart rhythm problems.
Red licorice does none of this because it contains none of glycyrrhizin. If your concern about licorice is blood pressure, potassium depletion, or heart arrhythmias, red licorice gets a pass on that particular set of risks. But escaping one danger doesn’t make something healthy, and that’s where people sometimes get confused.
The Sugar and Corn Syrup Problem
The dominant health concern with red licorice is the same one that applies to most processed candy: it delivers a concentrated dose of sugar with no nutritional upside. Many red licorice products use high-fructose corn syrup as a primary sweetener. HFCS is cheap and effective at creating the chewy, pliable texture that defines the candy, but research has raised concerns about what steady consumption of HFCS-sweetened products does to metabolism.
Animal research has shown that excessive intake of HFCS-sweetened drinks can lead to impaired glucose tolerance even without causing obesity, driven by defects in insulin secretion and changes in how the pancreas processes both glucose and fructose.3PubMed Central. Excessive Intake of High-Fructose Corn Syrup Drinks Induces Impaired Glucose Tolerance That finding is worth noting because it challenges the common assumption that sugar-related metabolic damage only shows up alongside weight gain. Whether you’re getting your HFCS from soda or from a bag of red licorice, the biochemistry doesn’t care about the delivery vehicle.
To be fair, nobody is developing metabolic disease from a few pieces of red licorice at a movie theater. The concern is habitual, daily consumption of significant quantities, especially when red licorice is one of many sugar-heavy foods in a person’s diet. A handful of red licorice adds roughly the same sugar load as a small candy bar, and the effects are cumulative over weeks and months.
Food Dyes and Additives Worth Knowing About
Red 40, also called Allura Red AC, is the coloring agent in most red licorice. It’s one of the most widely used synthetic food dyes in the United States and is approved by both the FDA and the European Food Safety Authority, though the EU requires warning labels on products containing it. The dye has been the subject of ongoing debate about whether it contributes to behavioral issues in children, particularly hyperactivity, though regulatory agencies have generally concluded the evidence doesn’t warrant a ban.
For most people, food additives like Red 40 cause no detectable problems. Adverse reactions to food additives in the general population are estimated at somewhere between one in 400 and one in 10,000 people, though the rate is higher among people with existing allergic or atopic conditions, where sensitivity to additives may run from about two to seven percent.4Current Opinion in Allergy and Clinical Immunology. Hypersensitivity reactions to food additives If you have a history of food sensitivities, hives, or atopic dermatitis, red licorice’s additive load is worth at least a passing thought. For everyone else, the dye is probably the least of the candy’s issues.
Some red licorice brands also include smaller amounts of other additives like soy lecithin, palm oil, and various emulsifiers. None of these are unique to red licorice; they show up across the entire processed food landscape. But if you’re someone who reads ingredient lists, red licorice’s list is longer and more industrial-sounding than you might expect from something marketed with a vaguely old-fashioned, wholesome image.
The “Health Halo” Trap
Red licorice benefits from a subtle marketing phenomenon that researchers have studied in other food categories. Because it’s fat-free, because it’s associated with the word “licorice” (which sounds herbal and natural), and because it doesn’t look like a candy bar, people tend to underestimate how much sugar and how many calories they’re consuming.
Research on how labeling affects perception has found that when candy is labeled as low-fat, people significantly underestimate its calorie content and rate it as better tasting when calorie information is available. People also assign more positive health attributes to low-fat-labeled candy compared to identical candy labeled normally.5ScienceDirect (Elsevier). Is less always more? The effects of low-fat labeling and caloric information on food intake, calorie estimates, taste preference, and health attributions Red licorice fits this pattern neatly. It’s genuinely low in fat, and that fact appears prominently on packaging. But being low-fat doesn’t make a food healthy when it’s primarily sugar and refined flour. It just means the calories come from carbohydrates instead.
This effect can lead to overconsumption. If you think you’re eating something relatively harmless, you eat more of it. A person who would stop at a few squares of chocolate might absent-mindedly work through half a bag of red licorice while watching a show, not registering that they’ve consumed several hundred calories of sugar in the process.
What About Your Teeth?
Chewy, sticky candy is one of the worst categories of food for dental health, and red licorice checks both boxes. The sugar clings to tooth surfaces and settles into grooves and spaces between teeth, feeding the bacteria that produce acid and erode enamel. Dentists routinely list chewy candy alongside dried fruit and caramel as the foods most likely to promote cavities.
Interestingly, compounds found in actual licorice root have shown some promise in dental research. One in vitro and in vivo study tested whether licorice-based candies could promote remineralization of early enamel lesions (the very first stage of cavity formation) and found visual evidence of remineralization in enamel blocks exposed to the licorice candy.6PubMed Central. Effect of Liquorice Candies on Remineralization of Initial Enamel Carious Lesion But that study used candy made with real licorice extract. Red licorice contains none of those potentially protective compounds. You get the sugar and the stickiness without any of the licorice root’s possible benefits. From a dental perspective, red licorice is basically a delivery mechanism for putting sugar directly onto your teeth and holding it there.
Does Red Licorice Have Anything Going for It?
If you’re looking hard for silver linings, red licorice is low in fat, low in sodium, and free of the glycyrrhizin that makes black licorice a genuine cardiovascular risk. It’s also free of common allergens like dairy, eggs, and nuts in most formulations (though it does contain wheat and sometimes soy). For people managing specific food allergies, that can matter at a snack table.
From a satiety standpoint, though, red licorice is not doing you any favors. Research on how food texture affects hunger has found that solid and higher-viscosity foods reduce hunger more effectively than liquid or low-viscosity foods.7PubMed Central. Food texture influences on satiety: systematic review and meta-analysis Red licorice occupies an awkward middle ground: it’s technically a solid, but it’s a chewy, quickly dissolved solid with no fiber, no protein, and no fat to slow digestion. It doesn’t trigger the same satiety signals that, say, a handful of almonds or a piece of cheese would. You can eat a lot of it without feeling full, which compounds the calorie problem.
Common Misconceptions People Have About Red Licorice
Several beliefs float around about red licorice that don’t hold up under scrutiny.
- It has medicinal properties: People sometimes assume red licorice shares the digestive or anti-inflammatory properties associated with licorice root. It does not. Those properties come from glycyrrhizin and other compounds in Glycyrrhiza glabra, none of which are present in red licorice. If you want the potential gut-health benefits of licorice root, you’d need an actual licorice supplement or DGL (deglycyrrhizinated licorice), not a bag of Twizzlers.
- It’s safer than other candy: Being fat-free doesn’t make red licorice a better choice than a candy that contains some fat but less sugar overall. A small piece of dark chocolate, for instance, has more fat but also contains flavonoids and tends to be consumed in smaller quantities because it’s more satiating.
- Black licorice is just a flavor variant: Many people think the only difference between red and black licorice is the taste. The difference is that black licorice contains a pharmacologically active plant extract that can affect your heart and blood pressure, while red licorice is a candy with no botanical ingredient at all. They’re fundamentally different products that happen to share a name.
When Red Licorice Could Actually Cause Problems
For most healthy adults, occasional red licorice is fine. But a few groups should be more cautious than average. People with celiac disease or non-celiac gluten sensitivity need to know that most red licorice contains wheat flour as a primary ingredient. It’s not a gluten-free candy, even though it doesn’t look like a wheat product.
People with diabetes or prediabetes should treat red licorice with the same caution they’d apply to any high-sugar, low-fiber food. Its glycemic impact is fast and substantial, and the lack of protein, fat, or fiber means blood sugar spikes without much to moderate the rise. The chewy texture might slow eating speed slightly, but it doesn’t slow absorption in any meaningful way.
Parents managing children’s diets should also be aware that red licorice is one of the more calorie-dense chewy candies per serving, partly because the serving sizes printed on bags tend to be smaller than what most people actually eat. Three or four ropes of Twizzlers are easy to consume in a sitting, but that can represent two or more labeled servings.
Licorice Root Supplements Versus Licorice Candy
One area that generates real confusion is the overlap between licorice as medicine and licorice as candy. Licorice root has been used in traditional medicine systems for centuries, and modern research has explored glycyrrhizin and other compounds in the root for potential effects on digestive health, sore throats, and skin conditions. DGL supplements, which have the glycyrrhizin removed to avoid the blood pressure effects, are sold specifically as digestive aids.
None of this has anything to do with the red ropes in the candy aisle. The word “licorice” on the package refers to a candy category and a shape, not to a botanical ingredient. Even black licorice candy, which does contain some licorice extract, usually has it in small enough quantities that you’d need to eat substantial amounts daily to experience medicinal or harmful effects. The FDA’s warning about black licorice applies to people eating it consistently over weeks, not to someone who has a few pieces at a party.
If you’re interested in licorice root for health purposes, the supplement aisle and the candy aisle are genuinely different destinations. A standardized DGL tablet has a known, controlled dose of the active compounds with the dangerous glycyrrhizin removed. A bag of candy has an unpredictable amount of extract mixed with sugar, corn syrup, and whatever else goes into that particular brand’s recipe. Treating candy as medicine, or worrying about candy as if it were medicine, misses the distinction entirely.