Acidity tests found many of these sweets to be more acidic than vinegar.
A mum is urging other parents to be careful with the sweets they allow their kids to consume after a sour sweet scorched her son’s tongue.
The mum sent a photo that showed her son’s tongue after eating the sweet to Australian child safety group, CPR Kids.
Without naming the sweet or manufacturer, the organisation shared the mum’s photo to their Facebook page in a bid to warn other parents of the highly acidic ingredients contained in such sweets.
“Sour candy packaging often stipulates that children under 4 shouldn’t eat the sweets and that consuming multiple lollies quickly can cause ‘temporary irritation to sensitive tongues and mouths,'” the group wrote alongside the photo, in which you can clearly see the burns on the boy’s tongue.
“We posted about sour lollies and chemical burns last year – we understand that the labels come with warnings, but dentists say the lollies should be avoided altogether due to the acidic coating (regardless of age).”
Their post about the same issue last November came after another concerned mum claimed her four-year-old daughter had gotten at her older brother’s Warhead lollies and burned a hole in her tongue after consuming as many as ten.
Melbourne mum Kirsty said her daughter Willow ran to her screaming, “Mummy! Mummy! Mummy! My tongue is really sore and it really hurts!”
“It felt like the skin was coming off,” the little girl told 9News, with her mum adding: “I burst into tears because I was really worried – I had never seen this before.”
After a trip to the GP, Kirsty said she “went on a rampage and threw every lolly out of the house”.
In their recent post, CPR Kids cited Jonathon Teo of the Dental Association of Australia, who said: “Sour lollies can be very dangerous due to the high level of acid or pH which can cause chemical burns.”
Australian consumer advocacy group CHOICE previously conducted an acidity test on popular sour lolly and sweet products, finding that 18 out of 20 of those tested had a pH level lower than three.
The lower the pH level a substance has, the more acidic it is. For context, seven is the neutral pH number, meaning anything that tests for this number is not acidic at all. Stomach acid has a pH of one, the most acidic. Vinegar has a pH of three – meaning 18 of the tested sweets were more acidic than vinegar.
Due to their sucky nature, sour sweets also spend more time in the mouth against the tongue, gums and cheeks than vinegar does when it’s consumed, so the acid within sour sweets has a longer chance to burn.
