Mothers-to-be, take note! Eating large amounts of liquorice, commonly known as mulethi in India, during pregnancy may adversely affect the development of your child’s brain, a new study has warned.
In the study, youths that were exposed to large amounts of liquorice in the womb performed less well than others in cognitive reasoning tests carried out by a psychologist. The difference was equivalent to about seven IQ points.
Those exposed to liquorice also performed less well in tasks measuring memory capacity and according to parental estimates, they had more ADHD-type problems than others.