Out of all the delicious Christmas candies out there, why on earth would you ever eat fucking candy canes?!?!, you ask incredulously.
Good question!
Candy canes = 🤮
But here’s the thing…
Apart from the sugar that gives candy canes their sweetness, one of the key ingredients of traditional red and white candy canes is peppermint oil, which is responsible for the cool sensation in the mouth. Well, according to research, peppermint oil can help improve exercise performance.1In a study published in the Avicenna Journal of Phytomedicine, thirty healthy male college students were evenly divided into an experimental and a control group and had their performance and physiological parameters measured. Compared to the control group that didn’t ingest a single dose of peppermint oil, those in the experimental group that received the oral administration of peppermint oil showed an incremental and significant increase in their grip force, standing vertical jump, and standing long jump, in addition to improvements in their lung function, as their forced vital capacity and peak inspiratory and expiratory flow rates all experienced significant increases.
Yeah, I know, candy canes sound mighty, mighty tasty right about now!2Even if the benefits of candy canes aren’t enough to convince you to eat them, they can still come in handy because the aroma of peppermint alone has appetite-suppressing effects that can help reduce hunger and food intake, as based on the findings of a study published in the journal Appetite. In that study, test subjects were tasked with smelling the scent of peppermint every two hours for five days, during which they were required to rate their hunger level after each inhalation and keep a daily food log listing everything they consumed. The experiment was completed again on a separate week, with the exception that peppermint wasn’t inhaled by the participants. Results show that people ate 2800 fewer calories — particularly from saturated fat, total fat, and sugar — and rated their hunger levels significantly lower during the peppermint inhalation condition. The exact mechanism by which the peppermint aroma decreases appetite isn’t known but it’s suggested that the scent releases hormones that promote satiety.
Candy Cane Nutrition Facts
Serving Size 1 cane (13g)
• Calories: 50
• Total Fat: 0g
• Cholesterol: 0mg
• Sodium: 15mg
• Total Carbohydrate: 13g
• Dietary Fiber: 0g
• Sugar: 9g
• Protein: 0g
Glossary: calories, dietary fat, exercise, food, hormones
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