Another way to mess up a fetus

A study in the American Journal of Epidemiology says mothers who eat a lot of licorice have kids with lower cognitive abilities at age 8 and who are more likely to have ADHD. Researchers guessed that "a component in licorice called glycyrrhizin may impair the placenta, allowing stress hormones to cross from the mother to the baby." They did the study in Finland, where apparently a lot of women eat a lot of licorice.

One always has to wonder which way the causal relation flows.