Licorice is all the rage with the health food nuts these days, if you haven't noticed.  It has all kinds of crazy-ass health benefits.  Turns out that proper black licorice is something that you should eat every once in a while, to top up on all the micronutrients.

I like black licorice, but I'm kind of a wimp about it.  I'd like to develop more of a taste for "the real stuff."  I decided to start with a stick of Panda licorice, because I had heard that it was on the mild side.  For someone whose primary experience of licorice has been black jelly beans and Good 'N Plenty candies, this was a bit of a departure.

The first thing I noticed was the texture, which I quite liked.  It had a texture I would almost describe as "meaty," like a very tender piece of beef jerky.  When I folded it in half, it broke fairly cleanly, with some crumbling action.  The color, smell, and texture put me in mind of those molasses cookies that you can buy at Starbucks OH HOW I LOVE THEM.  You can see the result of bending it in half in the picture on this post - it half broke, and half crumbled.

(When I was a little girl, I read a lot of books about horses and cowboys.  The cowboys were always feeding their horses something that I imagined being exactly like this.  I forget what they called it, but I think it was some kind of tobacco product.  My Google fu fails me, but if you have any idea what I'm talking about, please drop me a note!)

The taste was a lot milder than I expected.  By comparison, black jelly beans are really very harsh.  I guess that shouldn't be a surprise.  I expected it to taste stronger than jelly beans, for some reason.

Panda All Natural Soft Black Licorice is vegetarian and vegan friendly.  It even complies with Michael Pollan's food rules, because it has only four simple ingredients - molasses, wheat flour, licorice extract, and aniseed oil.  

This is also one of the few licorice candies I've encountered so far which actually contains, you know, licorice.  Most licorice candies are made of a blend of molasses and anise flavoring.  Which does not confer the supposed health benefits of true licorice root or licorice root extract.

Even so, most licorice candies probably do not contain enough actual licorice content to confer many of the supposed health benefits.  The licorice root is naturally sweet thanks to glycyrrhizinic acid (no I don't know how to pronounce that) which is 50 times sweeter than sugar, and also has interesting antiviral properties.  Licorice can also soothe the stomach and reduce bowel spasms, which makes it useful for people suffering from ulcers and GI disorders like Crohn's disease and irritable bowel syndrome.  

A more direct benefit is that the stick of Panda licorice which weighs 32 grams is almost the size of a Snickers bar, but has only 100 calories, zero grams of fat, and is not sweetened with either sugar or corn syrup.  And it's tasty to boot!