Speaker 1: Virgin Media broadband is smooth. How smooth you ask, well,
Speaker 1: Imagine you're a big old war Russ.
Speaker 2: And rather than lumbering around a glacier avoiding polar bears,
Speaker 2: you're on a lake, driving a speedboat three thousand kilos
Speaker 2: of mollusk, munching magnificence, feeling the wind in your whiskers
Speaker 2: and the sun on your big blubbery face. That's the
Speaker 2: kind of smoothness you feel. With ninety nine point nine
Speaker 2: percent broadband reliability available nationwide Virgin Media, it's playtime subject.
Speaker 3: To location availability. Teasc's apply for broadbund reliability see Virgin
Speaker 3: Media dot I forward slash proof.
Speaker 4: Drivers know what trouble sounds like?
Speaker 2: No, no, okay forward, oh no oh no.
Speaker 4: That's why they get covered from Ireland's soundest car insurance provider,
Speaker 4: Super Value Insurance.
Speaker 5: Thanks for calling us fin and don't beat yourself up
Speaker 5: about it.
Speaker 6: Sure, I'm driving ten years and partlet of parking still
Speaker 6: bats me.
Speaker 4: Get a cod from Supervalue Car Insurance to get ten
Speaker 4: percent off online.
Speaker 7: And we'll even throw in forty euroin vouchers. TEASNC supply
Speaker 7: vouchers include two twenty euro or forty eurospent.
Speaker 4: This car insurance is underwritten by AX Insurance, Deck Super
Speaker 4: Value Financial Services Stack Trading and Supervalue Insurance is regulated
Speaker 4: by the Central Bank of Ireland.
Speaker 8: Oh hey, it's that guy that you work with who
Speaker 8: somehow has like eight pairs of cool glasses.
Speaker 6: How did you do that? Ali Ward? Here we are Spootober.
Speaker 8: Spooketober is always full of like scary creepy things, and
Speaker 8: now this one is terrifying for your teeth and your pancreas,
Speaker 8: but not your tongues are your hearts, So let's get
Speaker 8: into it.
Speaker 6: This is just pure fun candy. So there are very few.
Speaker 8: Candy researchers and historians in the world, and we hunted
Speaker 8: down the best one and had one of my favorite
Speaker 8: conversations in the history of this podcast.
Speaker 6: What a treat.
Speaker 8: And it was only tricky to make because there's so
Speaker 8: much information that I could not keep to myself. So
Speaker 8: this is pretty comprehensive, but it's also not comprehensive because
Speaker 8: Candy's a huge world. So we're going to get into
Speaker 8: it in a sect. But first, thank you to all
Speaker 8: the patrons at patreon dot com for supporting the show
Speaker 8: for as little as a dollar a month and you
Speaker 8: get to submit your questions if you're a patron. Thank
Speaker 8: you to everyone skulking around in ologies merch from ologiesmerch
Speaker 8: dot com. Thank you as always to people who leave
Speaker 8: reviews for us, which help the show so much, and
Speaker 8: since I read each one, thank you this week too.
Speaker 8: Melon Farmer and Jim who wrote keep up the great work.
Speaker 8: Don't change a thing. Don't let the pew dwellers tell
Speaker 8: you not to swear. Potty language is a spice of
Speaker 8: life as long as you wash your hands before afternoon tea.
Speaker 8: Thank you, Jim the melon Farmer and everyone who.
Speaker 6: Is looking for kids. Save episodes.
Speaker 8: Just in general, I swear here and there in this show,
Speaker 8: but we do have classrooms save episodes specifically for you
Speaker 8: if you need that. It's a show called Smologies, and
Speaker 8: you can find it wherever you get podcasts. It's linked
Speaker 8: in the show notes. Those episodes, again are classroom safe.
Speaker 8: All age is safe in case you do not like
Speaker 8: the occasional adult word anyway, if you've ever left a review,
Speaker 8: I've read it and thank you.
Speaker 6: Okay.
Speaker 8: Confecteology it is a term that comes from the Latin
Speaker 8: for to confect or to make by mixing especially a
Speaker 8: medicinal preparation. We'll get into it. And this expert is
Speaker 8: a journalist, a former journalism professor, the author of over
Speaker 8: ten books, including twenty sixteen's Sweet Is Sin, The Unwrapped
Speaker 8: story of how candy became America's Favorite pleasure. And she
Speaker 8: also has this year's recent book release, Fun Foods of America,
Speaker 8: Outrageous Delights, celebrated brands, and iconic recipes. Now for the
Speaker 8: last fifteen years, she's also owned the nation's only historic
Speaker 8: candy company. It's called True Treats, ships all over the
Speaker 8: map and has a store in Harper's Ferry, Virginia. And
Speaker 8: True Treats was once an answer on Jeopardy. Pretty big deal.
Speaker 8: This ologist has appeared on so many radio and TV
Speaker 8: outlets to educate people about the historical and cultural relevance
Speaker 8: of candy. It took us months to book her for
Speaker 8: the special Spooptober but not scary, just fun episode. And honestly,
Speaker 8: this is one of the most spirited, blissful chats we've
Speaker 8: ever done, with some revelations at the end which shook
Speaker 8: me shook.
Speaker 6: I'm still laughing about it.
Speaker 8: So stick around to the very end because it's the
Speaker 8: best okay onto Everything from divisive candies, apothecary origin stories,
Speaker 8: military grade chocolate, the warheads that could save you, the
Speaker 8: polarization of liquorice root, having whorehound on hand, Sugar sources
Speaker 8: from beat to corn, Turkish temptations, Roman flimflam, marzipan, mini sculptures,
Speaker 8: the sourrest of the sour balls, sugar plum ballets, your
Speaker 8: grand ant's purse, vegan candy controversies, what she gives out
Speaker 8: for Halloween candy, and the best way to enjoy treats
Speaker 8: if you're trying to stay healthy. With author, journalist, and
Speaker 8: candy historian confectiologist Susan Benjamin.
Speaker 5: My name is Susan Benjamin. She her.
Speaker 8: Right before we started recording, you were telling me that
Speaker 8: there are very few candy experts in the world.
Speaker 6: I think perhaps you are the only one. Right.
Speaker 5: What I do is scholarly research. The history of candy
Speaker 5: is really interesting because it's about the people who ate it.
Speaker 5: So candy is unique, though, because there's so little scholarly
Speaker 5: research done, and there's so many misconceptions, and it so
Speaker 5: reveals things about our culture and who we are and
Speaker 5: how we treat each other in our relationship to food, sex, fund,
Speaker 5: the environment, and name it. It's always remarkable. It's always remarkable.
Speaker 8: I'm fascinated by this, and I feel like every time
Speaker 8: I go into one of those candy stories, it has
Speaker 8: a bunch of barrels full of taffy and swirls, and
Speaker 8: you know, you walk in there and it smells like sasparilla.
Speaker 8: You feel like you're stepping back into old times. And
Speaker 8: I've always been so curious about it. And I'm also
Speaker 8: wondering when did we start calling it candy? When did
Speaker 8: it go from a medicinal lozenge to like, I'm just
Speaker 8: eating this because I want to.
Speaker 5: So I don't know how far back you want me
Speaker 5: to go, because my research starts prehistory, you love it,
Speaker 5: and it goes all the way up through the ages.
Speaker 5: And then the part of candy history you're talking about,
Speaker 5: which is what most people think of, is the so
Speaker 5: called retro candy. So if you want to look at
Speaker 5: when did it become candy and those taffys that you mentioned,
Speaker 5: you really need to start looking at how people use
Speaker 5: cane sugar, which goes back to the old spice trade,
Speaker 5: and that was the beginning of what would then become
Speaker 5: pulled sugars and the things in the fourteen hundreds, and
Speaker 5: then it made the way to the fifteen hundreds and
Speaker 5: then became useful to enslave people who didn't have access
Speaker 5: to things, but they used what they had and were
Speaker 5: able to pull molasses, which is the dregs of the sugar,
Speaker 5: for example, and you sawed them, and that was the
Speaker 5: origin of what then became the taffy. And that has
Speaker 5: its own story.
Speaker 6: More on taffy later because it's bunkers. But back to prehistory.
Speaker 5: They're Swedish scientists who found, oh, millennia ago, people were
Speaker 5: chewing tree resins as gum, and scientists have found teeth
Speaker 5: marks in the gum indicating that and they were at
Speaker 5: least some of the samples for from teenagers. From teenagers,
Speaker 5: you can imagine like way back, these kids chewing gum
Speaker 5: and the mother, yeah, spit it out, but they spit
Speaker 5: it out, and then flash forward and we got it.
Speaker 5: But what's interesting is that that those and resins that
Speaker 5: they chewed, and they chewed for their teeth and they
Speaker 5: became the foundation of today's chewing gum and literally are
Speaker 5: still used in some chewing gums as the base and
Speaker 5: up until World War Two, people with chewing resins just
Speaker 5: as resins are as softer gums. So for the same
Speaker 5: reason people thought it was good for the teeth. Freshen
Speaker 5: your breath gave you something to do.
Speaker 8: So yes, ancient teens smack and shaw. According to a
Speaker 8: twenty nineteen paper titled Ancient DNA for mastics solidifies connection
Speaker 8: between material culture and genetics of Mesolithic hunter gatherers in
Speaker 8: Scandinavia and they were of the Late Mesolithic period about
Speaker 8: ten thousand years ago and wads of chewed birch bark
Speaker 8: pitch found at an archaeological site based on the toothwaar
Speaker 8: and the molar placement suggest that the chewers were both
Speaker 8: male and female and around twelve to fourteen years old.
Speaker 8: But there was this twenty twenty four follow up study
Speaker 8: called Metagenomic Analysis of Mesolithic chewed pitch reveals poor oral
Speaker 8: health among Stone age individuals and it went further into
Speaker 8: those wads of gum and they were able to extract
Speaker 8: DNA to see what those kiddos were eating, and the
Speaker 8: scientists identified DNA sequences from species such as red fox, hazelnut,
Speaker 8: red deer, and apple. But honestly, chewing gum could have
Speaker 8: its own episode. So we're gonna get back to candy.
Speaker 8: You mentioned a little bit about using the dregs, using
Speaker 8: molasses and sorgum. What typically have candies been composed of?
Speaker 8: Has it changed a lot from things like honeys and
Speaker 8: waxes to cane sugar to corn syrup. Do you see
Speaker 8: kind of an evolution and composition.
Speaker 5: So within the universe, say, of sugars, there was cane sugar,
Speaker 5: there was some honey, not as much as people think.
Speaker 5: And in North America, of course honey, the honeybee didn't
Speaker 5: get into the fifteen sixteen hundred, so it's brand new.
Speaker 5: But people use sugars from maple. That would be the
Speaker 5: Native Americans, and they would use it from foods.
Speaker 8: And as we discussed in the Melatology and Indigenous Melotology
Speaker 8: episodes about beekeeping and native bees respectively. So the cultivated
Speaker 8: honey bees that you see in North America are feral
Speaker 8: from livestock populations brought over by European colonizers. They're not
Speaker 8: native here. But in Central America, as far back as
Speaker 8: three thousand years, indigenous populations in the Yucatan Peninsula hunted
Speaker 8: and collected wild honey, and they kept populations of this
Speaker 8: stingless honey producing bee called Melipona beachii, which is now
Speaker 8: nearly extinct in the region.
Speaker 6: And there was this.
Speaker 8: Twenty ten paper titled Ancient Maya Beekeeping and it notes
Speaker 8: that bees and their honey were considered sacred and valuable.
Speaker 8: But yeah, in North America, when you just see a
Speaker 8: regular old honeybee APIs malifera, you are looking at essentially
Speaker 8: a feral cat or a pigeon. And for more on
Speaker 8: those you can see the Columbitology pigeon episodes and the
Speaker 8: philonology episodes of course. But yeah, Susan is here for
Speaker 8: the history and what it says about culture.
Speaker 5: So I want to know what every like, what were
Speaker 5: women in a rural setting using for food and what
Speaker 5: kind of sugar is what was their idea of celebration
Speaker 5: in front? And so you go to these newspapers and
Speaker 5: then you get the letters to the editors or you
Speaker 5: have these intrepid reporters who are out there interviewing enslave
Speaker 5: people while they were enslaved. So if you want to say,
Speaker 5: what is the difference between candy and say, bake goods
Speaker 5: or other foods, it is that it's based in sugar
Speaker 5: of some sort, right, And that's what I see is
Speaker 5: the difference. Also culturally, how is candy different. So candy
Speaker 5: is something that we eat for fun and it makes
Speaker 5: us feel good, but it's also something that we give
Speaker 5: to people as a gift of love and has not
Speaker 5: that many other uses. But it didn't start that way.
Speaker 5: So originally candy was something that had a lot of
Speaker 5: sugar in it and was based in sugar. But like
Speaker 5: everything really, it had some health or medicinal value to it,
Speaker 5: and so sugar was used both as a medicine in
Speaker 5: itself and then as a disguise.
Speaker 8: So the industrial revolutions, where goods went from individually handmade
Speaker 8: to machine produced, that started around the mid seventeen hundreds
Speaker 8: and it spanned until the mid eighteen hundreds, thanks in
Speaker 8: part to the development and the refinement of the steam engine,
Speaker 8: and people were like, you, guys, let's make more shift
Speaker 8: for people to buy.
Speaker 5: So by the time we got to the industrial age
Speaker 5: to the let's say mid eighteen hundreds, right now we
Speaker 5: see people have the opportunity to make more things because
Speaker 5: of the industrial revolution, and they're able to market it
Speaker 5: so they can make things that they can market and
Speaker 5: that they can bring to untapped audiences and sell. So
Speaker 5: candy came about as we know it today as serving
Speaker 5: that purpose, but it never quite left the medicinal world behind.
Speaker 5: So candy was candy as you know it in the
Speaker 5: industrial sense, was made for working class kids as one
Speaker 5: of the primary audiences. They never had enough money to
Speaker 5: buy anything. They were able to get a penny, a
Speaker 5: half penny, whatever, and marketers targeted working class kids to
Speaker 5: buy their goods, and this is pivotal in my opinion,
Speaker 5: and the sales of candy enabled working class kids for
Speaker 5: the first time ever to see themselves as part of
Speaker 5: the economy of America and to see themselves as empowered
Speaker 5: or in being able to at some point fully live
Speaker 5: in this environment of who we are as Americans, as
Speaker 5: not a supporting actor, but as a principal actor in
Speaker 5: all of that. And it was their able to go
Speaker 5: and have commerce that so mattered to the role of candy.
Speaker 5: The well to do really hated that. There has always
Speaker 5: been a tremendous amount of classism that now is subverted,
Speaker 5: but was really blatant. And if you look at the
Speaker 5: old writings about candy. They say, these urchins think if
Speaker 5: they can go buy something, they'll have power, and they can't.
Speaker 5: They would blame candy on murders. They would blame candy
Speaker 5: on death's fires, robberies.
Speaker 6: So yeah.
Speaker 8: In eighteen fifty two, a doctor with the name of
Speaker 8: James Redfield asserted that as sugar was refined from its
Speaker 8: natural sources, it was another stage in the downhill course
Speaker 8: of deception and mockery, cowardice, cruelty, and degradation. In a
Speaker 8: century later, in nineteen fifty five, Edward Podolski, who was
Speaker 8: an American doctor also a sexologist, wrote in the paper
Speaker 8: The Chemical Brew of Criminal Behavior that there is an
Speaker 8: intimate relationship between the amount of sugar present in the
Speaker 8: blood and man's social behavior, and cited a list of
Speaker 8: crimes committed either under the influence of insulin or in
Speaker 8: a state of spontaneous low blood sugar, including everything from
Speaker 8: assault and battery to homicide, various sexual perversions, false fire alarms,
Speaker 8: petty larceny, arson and traffic infractions, and some delinquents, he said,
Speaker 8: have a tendency to hypoglycemia, and the lower the sugar
Speaker 8: level falls, the greater is the tendency to commit a
Speaker 8: criminal act. Now, as for blood sugar, it can definitely
Speaker 8: affect your mood and in my case, my sanity. Now,
Speaker 8: some people mentally associate eating a lot of sugar with
Speaker 8: high blood glucose and hyperactive children scaling the drapes. But
Speaker 8: it should all also be noted that some folks, in
Speaker 8: response to a spike in glucose, produce a really quick
Speaker 8: rush of insulin which sends the glucose into the cells.
Speaker 8: Thus their blood sugar actually crashes. And this is called
Speaker 8: reactive hypoglycemia or post prandial hyperinsulinemia. And I know that
Speaker 8: because apparently I have it, and I had to take
Speaker 8: like a five hour blood test to the doctors.
Speaker 6: I'm one of those people.
Speaker 8: In my case, when I eat sugar, it was helpful
Speaker 8: because I can cry on a dime. It's really weird,
Speaker 8: but at least it's not petty larceny. But there was
Speaker 8: also this two thousand and nine British Journal of Psychiatry
Speaker 8: paper titled Confectionery Consumption in Childhood and Adult Violence, citing
Speaker 8: correlations between canny consumption in childhood and violent crime later
Speaker 8: in life. But there were a ton of critics of
Speaker 8: this study citing that permissive parenting may have had the
Speaker 8: key role. And I imagine fifteen years later researchers would
Speaker 8: also now look at neurodivergence dopamine seeking as well as
Speaker 8: chronic PTSD from poor accommodations. But what hell do I
Speaker 8: know less than an ADHD expert and doctor Russell Barkley
Speaker 8: is in our three part ADHD episode, and he does
Speaker 8: touch on impulsivity and inadequate childhood interventions for neurodivergent kids
Speaker 8: and how that affects adulthood. So yes, what's a response
Speaker 8: to social structures that are simply inequitable? And what's dietary
Speaker 8: and what can our little epe bodies and our lizard
Speaker 8: brains even handle? Either way, When poor kids had penny candy,
Speaker 8: people were like, lock your doors, hell's got to break loose.
Speaker 5: They treated it almost as we would today as say
Speaker 5: somebody who's all hopped up on coke? Right, I mean,
Speaker 5: ironically the coke and opium in those days in the pharmacies,
Speaker 5: but not in the candy. But yeah, it's really important
Speaker 5: and it's really good, and it served really valuable purpose
Speaker 5: to these kids who could purchase.
Speaker 8: It, and that leap from pharmacy to candy counter. Are
Speaker 8: we seeing the hard candies that were used to seeing
Speaker 8: those start as lozenges? What are some of the types
Speaker 8: of candy that the industry recognizes, from confections to taffy's
Speaker 8: to suckers, to bond bonds to hard candies, Like what
Speaker 8: kind of a ray?
Speaker 6: How do you classify them?
Speaker 5: That's a good question. I would classify by their purpose
Speaker 5: and who's eating them. And so the hard candies that
Speaker 5: you're talking about, the boiled sugars, go back forever. A
Speaker 5: rock candy, for example, has got to be I don't know,
Speaker 5: you know, at least two millennia old, but it was
Speaker 5: always used as it is today for sore throat, and
Speaker 5: it's of its own kind of thing, similar to say
Speaker 5: the sugar plums, and the sugar plums you see coming
Speaker 5: around the fourteen fifteen hundreds, which were a little seed
Speaker 5: or not put in a balancing pan over a fire
Speaker 5: with sugar syrup or some something of that sort in it,
Speaker 5: rolled around, Let to sit, put back, rolled around, let's
Speaker 5: sit bla blah blah blah for well to do European
Speaker 5: women and then well to do American women who would
Speaker 5: eat them after a meal as a digestive and refreshment
Speaker 5: for their breath. Right, those became turn a century with
Speaker 5: the machinery that that's a panting machine that you know,
Speaker 5: looked kind of like a cement mixer or is kind
Speaker 5: of like when you were rolled around, they became the
Speaker 5: job breaker.
Speaker 2: Boy howdy oh.
Speaker 5: It went from being from the very well to do
Speaker 5: and something very uppercrest and took a great deal of
Speaker 5: skill to make to being something that little kids or
Speaker 5: even all you know, could go and buy, putting in
Speaker 5: the pocket and have it. That's hard candy and.
Speaker 8: Just a really quick chemistry lesson. So candy has different
Speaker 8: terms depending on the temperature that the sugar is cooked at.
Speaker 8: And according to this very handy article titled the cold
Speaker 8: Water Candy Test from Exploratorium dot org, my favorite childhood
Speaker 8: museum in San Francisco. So you've got the softball stage
Speaker 8: that starts around two hundred and forty degrees fahrenheit or
Speaker 8: one fifteen celsius, and this will result in a texture
Speaker 8: like fudge or prelines. Next up is the firm ball stage,
Speaker 8: which you'll get caramel texture. The hard ball stage will
Speaker 8: get you textures like neuget, marshmallows and gummies. And then
Speaker 8: as the temperatures increase that you're cooking the sugar at
Speaker 8: the moisture goes down, the sugar quotient increases, and you
Speaker 8: have the soft crack stage that's like saltwater taffy and butterscotch,
Speaker 8: and then the hard crack stage of nut brittles and
Speaker 8: lollipops and hard candies and toffees. So your candy is
Speaker 8: a chemistry experiment. So side note on those sugar plums.
Speaker 8: Sometimes they did have a little prune center, but more
Speaker 8: often than not they just tended to be oval shaped.
Speaker 8: So just think of plum shaped sugar balls more than
Speaker 8: prunes dusted and sugar powder, which is what I always
Speaker 8: thought that sugar plums were. No, they're like hard candies. Also,
Speaker 8: you know the sugar plum fairy in the Tchaikovsky Valley
Speaker 8: the Nutcracker.
Speaker 6: Okay, so she is the ruler.
Speaker 8: Of the land of sweets while the prince is a way,
Speaker 8: I guess she's like a deputy governor but in it
Speaker 8: too too. Also, it would be so good to see
Speaker 8: like a Halloween adaptation of the Nutcracker, but instead of
Speaker 8: the sugar plumb ferry. It's like the jawbreaker goblin. Someone
Speaker 8: gets some funding for that. Would those women suck on
Speaker 8: it for a little bit and put it back in
Speaker 8: a drawer or would they eat the whole sugar plumber
Speaker 8: one time?
Speaker 5: Well, what I'm talking about is this is a teeny
Speaker 5: little sugar.
Speaker 6: Okay, so that wasn't sure.
Speaker 5: But they did have, say, sour balls. Right, so you're
Speaker 5: too young, But my grandmother and all of my great
Speaker 5: aunts had these persons and then the person they these
Speaker 5: black persons. Anybody my agent's gun on sixty seven, Well
Speaker 5: know what I'm talking about. They would have candy bawls.
Speaker 5: They had a purses and they would sit there talking talk,
Speaker 5: and in the bottom of the purses were life savers
Speaker 5: and sour balls and things of that sort. And you
Speaker 5: didn't even have to ask, Oh, just go in and
Speaker 5: you could just rummage in or they would just offer
Speaker 5: to you and it didn't matter. You could have all
Speaker 5: that you wanted. It was great. They were bite size,
Speaker 5: the bridge mix, the little chocolate covered raisins. They were
Speaker 5: deliberately made bite size so that you could say, play
Speaker 5: cards with one hand and just sort of eat your
Speaker 5: candies with the other. There are mansu bigcorum, no matter
Speaker 5: who was eating it. Candy bears are a different story.
Speaker 5: We don't talk about those when we talk about good manners.
Speaker 8: Yeah, you're not playing Gin Rummy and eating Snickers probably.
Speaker 5: Let's put it this way, your grandmother would never have
Speaker 5: a candy bear on the bottom of your purse. She'd
Speaker 5: have a little lifesaver that you had pulled over the top,
Speaker 5: but she would not have a Snickers war.
Speaker 8: So there are those hard candies. There are sours. Yeah,
Speaker 8: what are some other types of candies?
Speaker 5: There are hard candies, There are taffy's, There are fizzes,
Speaker 5: There are chocolates, There are filled chocolates. There are soft
Speaker 5: paste candies like the Wave for which was made by
Speaker 5: the Way in eighteen forty seven, one of the first
Speaker 5: candies to be made out in a popcarrier.
Speaker 8: And just a side note, so the Neco wafer inventor,
Speaker 8: who's this Boston apothecary had a brother, and his brother
Speaker 8: invented this other chalky candy you've had in your pocket
Speaker 8: or your mouth. Valentine's Day conversation hearts, which explains why
Speaker 8: they taste so much alike. Also, if you've ever read
Speaker 8: the Chronicles of Narnia, and you could not pay attention
Speaker 8: to the narrative because you just kept wondering what the
Speaker 8: fuck Turkish delights were. They were like a wiggly jelly cube,
Speaker 8: but rose and almond and pistachio or any fruit flavor.
Speaker 8: And they emerged, of course, in Turkey in an apothecary,
Speaker 8: and they were also called locum, which means to rest
Speaker 8: your throat. And the irony of me doing this episode
Speaker 8: while sick is not lost on me.
Speaker 6: It's brutal.
Speaker 8: But Turkish delights began to spread worldwide in the seventeen
Speaker 8: hundreds and eventually, like a smaller candy coated version, became
Speaker 8: our modern day jelly pen. Now, as for C. S.
Speaker 8: Lewis making locum the locus of downfall in The Lion,
Speaker 8: the Witch and the Wardrobe, there's this historian Kara Stricklin
Speaker 8: who wrote an essay titled why was Turkish Delight? C? S.
Speaker 6: Lewis's Guilty Pleasure?
Speaker 8: And it poses the hypothesis that the book was written
Speaker 8: during World War Two, when confections were rationed and these
Speaker 8: exotic treasures were hard to come by for nearly a decade,
Speaker 8: so he maybe wrote the whole book just Jones and
Speaker 8: for candy. But let's turn our attention to some gummy
Speaker 8: or matters. Something that just walloped me was learning that
Speaker 8: Harry Bo the makers of gummy bears. That's a German
Speaker 8: company and it comes from the founder's name, Hans Regelbon
Speaker 8: Harry Beau. And this entire time I thought Harrybo was
Speaker 8: Japanese because when it comes to weird candy, Japan hits
Speaker 8: us in the face with its gloves and we take it.
Speaker 5: So I would say, what are the kinds the gummy
Speaker 5: candies which originated many think I think from the Turkish
Speaker 5: to light Year nine hundred, But the gummy candies, which
Speaker 5: are its own kind of existence. There are all sorts
Speaker 5: of creams, French creams, those creamy things that just melt
Speaker 5: in your mouth.
Speaker 8: My grandma's preference was a dish of butterments, which are
Speaker 8: the ones that look like a stale mini marshmallow, but
Speaker 8: then they dissolve into like a peppermint paste in your mouth.
Speaker 8: And Susan said that those were also used to cover
Speaker 8: booze breath and saloons. So on the topic of less
Speaker 8: innocent contractions.
Speaker 5: The candies that we're talking about had a lot, not
Speaker 5: the ones my grandmother had, God forbid, but they had
Speaker 5: a lot to do it with us sex what Yeah,
Speaker 5: and they still do today. Haven't you ever had a
Speaker 5: creamy chocolate?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 5: So truffles are a good example. They were really came
Speaker 5: into being in France around the time of the Moulin Rouge.
Speaker 5: And if you look at the paintings that say tulusla trek,
Speaker 5: which are very sexual, very sensual and amazing. And if
Speaker 5: he didn't come from such a well to do family,
Speaker 5: he probably would have been prison for him, but he didn't.
Speaker 5: They were just gorgeous. They were comfortable, are to what
Speaker 5: the truffle was. And so the truffle was a gift
Speaker 5: that you would go when you're going out to meet
Speaker 5: with somebody, if you're a man in particular, although the
Speaker 5: you know, to Luisa trek version would be men with
Speaker 5: men and women with women, but the commercial version was
Speaker 5: a man meeting a woman and would have a box
Speaker 5: of chocolates. And that was, in our opinions as a
Speaker 5: Victorian culture, a gift of fondness. And really there were
Speaker 5: gifts of sex and come on, let's go and sex.
Speaker 5: They were very sensual. The rose the roses and the
Speaker 5: swirls and so forth. I mean, you know, a guy
Speaker 5: in the collegist would recognize a lot of their views
Speaker 5: how they're done. So they're also really sexual. I mean
Speaker 5: it it's been so multi purpose.
Speaker 8: Were there certain ingredients in candy that were considered afrod
Speaker 8: usiacs and for adults and like sour things.
Speaker 6: That were for kids? Like are there certain flavor profiles
Speaker 6: that target different demographics?
Speaker 5: I would say that for kids, it really was the
Speaker 5: cheapness of the candy. So you know, there was the
Speaker 5: little kiss candies, which hers she did not invent. It
Speaker 5: was the name of a candy. It's a little kiss,
Speaker 5: it's a little piece. He used it. It was Hershey's
Speaker 5: version of the kiss, and now the company, I don't
Speaker 5: know how long ago, not like four or five years ago,
Speaker 5: got to own it, and everybody thinks her she invented
Speaker 5: the kiss. And there were a million kinds of kisses,
Speaker 5: and little kids would go and grown ups too, they
Speaker 5: would go buy a bag of kisses. And it could
Speaker 5: have been wilber Bud, which was a kiss, or it
Speaker 5: could have been any number of marshmallows or Toughi's. There
Speaker 5: were little pieces.
Speaker 6: So yes, h O.
Speaker 8: Wilbert developed this drop shaped candy from the way that
Speaker 8: the nozzle kisses sheet underneath it, and then about thirteen
Speaker 8: years later Milton.
Speaker 6: Hershey was like, that's a great idea. I love that.
Speaker 8: And it wasn't until the turn of the century two
Speaker 8: thousand y two k that Hershey finally won the trademark
Speaker 8: to kisses. And they had to do this in court
Speaker 8: by proving that when the public hears chocolate kisses, they
Speaker 8: think Hershey's kisses. So sorry, Wilbur, you lose. But I
Speaker 8: don't know if it matters because the Wilbur family business
Speaker 8: has since been acquired by this multinational food giant called Cargill. However,
Speaker 8: they still have a Wilbert Chocolate storefront in Lititz, Pennsylvania,
Speaker 8: where you can get some Wilbur Buds, which is what
Speaker 8: they're called now, don't call them kisses. Don't do it. It's petty,
Speaker 8: it's mean.
Speaker 5: So kids would get that and they would get little
Speaker 5: cheap chocolates. But it was well to do who would
Speaker 5: have these sumptuous chocolates that were just made with no
Speaker 5: ways and skilled hands puts them together, and there was
Speaker 5: a great art to creating them and they were for sex.
Speaker 6: I had no idea that they were so sexer.
Speaker 5: Well, can I tell you?
Speaker 6: Yes?
Speaker 5: May I tell you a bit of the past, yes? Please?
Speaker 5: All right, As you know, through most of time, explorers
Speaker 5: were really just raiding the cultures and the food rays
Speaker 5: of everybody. So of course a number of explorers, including Hernandez,
Speaker 5: I think it was.
Speaker 6: So.
Speaker 8: This is Hernan Cortez, a Spanish conky storer who very
Speaker 8: famously had major beef with the emperor of the Aztec
Speaker 8: Empire and the late fourteen hundreds and the early fifteen
Speaker 8: hundreds that led to the emperor's downfall and Cortes losing
Speaker 8: most of his looted treasure. But later Cortes had a
Speaker 8: child with the emperor's daughter who's only seventeen, so I
Speaker 8: cannot imagine it was a consensual love affair. But anyway,
Speaker 8: back to this counky storre's arrival in the Aztec Empire.
Speaker 8: So Hernan Cortez.
Speaker 5: Wound up in Mexico and with him was this man
Speaker 5: who was writing, taking notes on what he saw, and
Speaker 5: there they Now you know what these people are like
Speaker 5: from Europe, right, I mean, in one hundred and ten
Speaker 5: degree heat, they're going to wear layers of clothes, and
Speaker 5: there they see this Montezuma with very few clothes and
Speaker 5: all sorts of feathers and very well clothed in his
Speaker 5: own beautiful way. And so he's drinking this cacaw and
Speaker 5: he has all these wives and all these half naked
Speaker 5: women going around, and so somehow they figured out and
Speaker 5: it wasn't even true that he drank fifty jalousies of
Speaker 5: chocolate a day to placate his many wives. So A,
Speaker 5: I don't think you cared less about placating his wives.
Speaker 5: And b the jalices of chocolate were available to everybody,
Speaker 5: and he just really liked them, and they were meant
Speaker 5: to be healthy and good few and they were for
Speaker 5: staminar virility. But it wasn't necessarily sex. But of course
Speaker 5: you got these guys from Europe. You don't even want
Speaker 5: to talk about it. They'll do it, but you know,
Speaker 5: they have all these code words for it, and so
Speaker 5: he his Montazuma. So they go back, they bring the
Speaker 5: chocolate back to them to Spain, and the Spanish people
Speaker 5: harbored it and they didn't tell anyone about it, and
Speaker 5: eventually were leaked doubt so through the marriage of royalty,
Speaker 5: and then it became this upper echelon, very fine kind
Speaker 5: of food. But Montezuma's relationship, alleged relationship to chocolate in
Speaker 5: its sexual powers, never really left. Only now it's the
Speaker 5: well to do right with all of their clothes and
Speaker 5: perfumes and foul ways when they're tiging right, I'm compared
Speaker 5: to Montezuma out there just doing his thing. I mean,
Speaker 5: no question, he would raid other cultures and he would
Speaker 5: made them pay a tariff, which was in fact to
Speaker 5: cow's right because he didn't grow in Mexico. I'm not
Speaker 5: a role here but getting back. So that's how chocolate
Speaker 5: became the upper echelon sexy sexy thing and why we
Speaker 5: today consider it in aphrodisiac.
Speaker 6: That's amazing.
Speaker 5: But last thing, sex is in the brain, isn't it.
Speaker 5: Do you think of sexy, Go eat it and have
Speaker 5: some sex, good sex.
Speaker 8: So chocolate, the plant it's derived from literally means food
Speaker 8: of the gods, and it does contain the amino acid tryptofan,
Speaker 8: which is used to make serotonin in our brains. And
Speaker 8: it also contains the stimulant phenyl ethyl amine, which is
Speaker 8: a natural euphoria inducing cannabinoid and it boosts our dopamine
Speaker 8: reward systems. For more on all these neurochemicals, we have
Speaker 8: a molecular neurobiology episode for you. And for more on
Speaker 8: not chocolate, we have a whole episode on carib What
Speaker 8: it is, why did almond moms of the nineteen seventies
Speaker 8: eat it? And why is it falling from the trees
Speaker 8: in front of your house?
Speaker 6: But back to chocolate. Is it an aphrodisiac? Is it?
Speaker 6: Can someone study this? Of course they did so.
Speaker 8: A two thousand and six Journal of Sexual Medicine article
Speaker 8: titled Chocolate and Women's Sexual Health and Intriguing Correlation found
Speaker 8: that yes, women in their study who ate chocolate had
Speaker 8: higher female sexual function scores. But but it also found
Speaker 8: that younger participants ate more chocolate and that in general,
Speaker 8: younger people they're just hornier. I mean, it's placebo effect
Speaker 8: is effective, plus the texture. I just love that they
Speaker 8: saw that and they were like, it's essentially viagra. They're like,
Speaker 8: it's viagra.
Speaker 6: Is what he's drinking. He must be in that.
Speaker 5: Whole idea of like viagra and of needing to create
Speaker 5: who we are. The world of candy came out of
Speaker 5: a world of herbs, and it came out of a
Speaker 5: world of you know, medicinal things, but it wasn't quite
Speaker 5: as imbued with having to reinvent ourselves. It's more like
Speaker 5: wanting to have a great time and not young if
Speaker 5: it could help it.
Speaker 8: Anyway, Well, what about the preservation aspects of it? Because
Speaker 8: I know that if you candy orange peels, they tend
Speaker 8: not to spoil it. So was candy and sugar? Was
Speaker 8: that a way of preservation in olden times? Did it
Speaker 8: grow from that direction?
Speaker 6: Yes?
Speaker 5: It did. So I've just been working on this forum
Speaker 5: one of the museums, in fact, trying to convince them
Speaker 5: that the French didn't actually create glass a candy. But
Speaker 5: in fact, we're going to look at this from the
Speaker 5: lens of a very narrow perception of history, where everything
Speaker 5: that's candy in the US somewhat somehow wound up with
Speaker 5: the ancient Romans or Greeks. That's not true. I mean
Speaker 5: half of what they were eating came from Asia, what
Speaker 5: I mean, So that isn't true. So we're gonna let
Speaker 5: go of that.
Speaker 8: Let us not credit the Roman and the Greeks with everything.
Speaker 5: But one of the things that you absolutely write about
Speaker 5: is that sugar, and in particular, in many places, honey
Speaker 5: was a preservative and it was used that way just
Speaker 5: as salt may have been. And honey was useful because,
Speaker 5: as everybody knows, it didn't spoil, although it could crystallize,
Speaker 5: So sugar was used as a preservative. And one of
Speaker 5: the vestiges of that is, in fact, the much maligned
Speaker 5: glass a candy, which would be the orange peels. And
Speaker 5: it's much maligned because it's a core part of the
Speaker 5: very much maligned Christmas cake, right, the fruitcake. But really
Speaker 5: it has a venerable history and is based on the
Speaker 5: preservative aspect of sugar.
Speaker 8: So if you're wondering why a jar of honey can
Speaker 8: outlive you, some pots of it have apparently been found
Speaker 8: in ancient Egyptian tombs. So, according to one Smithsonian article,
Speaker 8: food scientists have cited a one two three punch of
Speaker 8: one the very low moisture content of honey being inhospitable
Speaker 8: two bacteria viruses. Plus it's got low pH and high acidity,
Speaker 8: and a bit of hydrogen peroxide resulting from some chemical
Speaker 8: reactions from the little honeybee tummies since they eat the
Speaker 8: nectar and then they kind of barf it out into honey.
Speaker 8: Don't worry about it. We don't worry about that. Are
Speaker 8: there any candies that are based on the fermentation of
Speaker 8: that sugar or No. Once you've fermented, then you're just
Speaker 8: talking booze. That's just booze.
Speaker 5: Yeah, other way around. So the candy, oh man, all right, now,
Speaker 5: let's talk about prohibition, because candy, particularly rock candy, was
Speaker 5: used as an acre fomenting agent in the alcohol in
Speaker 5: the drink rock and rye. Rock is the rock candy,
Speaker 5: and rye is the whiskey. So you put rock candy
Speaker 5: in the rye and it would create this really very
Speaker 5: serpic kind of drink. I don't know if you've had it. No,
Speaker 5: I don't recommend it. OK up to you.
Speaker 8: So prohibition in the US last year from nineteen twenty
Speaker 8: to nineteen thirty three, and rock and rye was kind
Speaker 8: of like a rye old fashioned with rye whiskey, rock candy,
Speaker 8: bitters and a little orange rind or a cherry. And
Speaker 8: there are fago drinkers out there. And yes, there is
Speaker 8: a soda flavor called rock and rye which is said
Speaker 8: to taste like vanilla doctor pepper, And somehow in a
Speaker 8: Daquel hayze, I found myself on the subredded Juggalos, and
Speaker 8: one enthusiastic insane clown posse and Fago fan proclaimed, quote,
Speaker 8: my dad found me some rock and rye. Finally, what
Speaker 8: do you guys think of it? Whoop whoop, and many
Speaker 8: chimed in that this flavor of fago was the best
Speaker 8: flavor of fag all right.
Speaker 5: However, what was interesting was that during prohibition, the prohibitions
Speaker 5: were close in everything down that was remotely connected to alcohol,
Speaker 5: including the rock candy factories, even though they were genuinely
Speaker 5: making rock candy, and rock candy is genuinely important from
Speaker 5: many things was used as menicuva throat, but it was
Speaker 5: also favorite of kids. They love rock candy right close down,
Speaker 5: and they shut down all but one, I think because
Speaker 5: it was so used as for alcohol. Can I tell
Speaker 5: you the flip side of that though?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 5: All right, So if you like candy, you gotta be
Speaker 5: somebodyho likes to have fun, right, yeah, I mean it's
Speaker 5: all about fun. So you have these candy makers during prohibition,
Speaker 5: and they want to be able to sell the candy,
Speaker 5: all right, So how do you sell it? Everybody's making candy.
Speaker 5: The million kind of candies out there. You're sell any kids,
Speaker 5: but you want others to buy it, right, So what
Speaker 5: did they do? They named the candy for popular illegal
Speaker 5: prohibition era cocktails.
Speaker 6: Oh my god.
Speaker 5: And so you have the cherry match, which was a
Speaker 5: very really popular cocktail because you just took shit. I
Speaker 5: mean prisoners who are doing this in their bathrooms, I
Speaker 5: mean literally people at home. You take cherry or other
Speaker 5: fruits too, but cherry was real popular. You let it
Speaker 5: ferment is the sugar in the cherry, right, that makes
Speaker 5: it ferment, And in some of the acids, you make
Speaker 5: it into a drink you have. Do you remember the
Speaker 5: little wax bottles they would call nickel disp yes, right
Speaker 5: the neck for a nickel for a bag in the
Speaker 5: nip because they made them look like a nipple. Whiskey
Speaker 5: during prohibition or the lead into ProBiS. So you can
Speaker 5: go through one candy f to the other. It's almost
Speaker 5: like a shadow rebellion against a prohibition that with the candies,
Speaker 5: it was great.
Speaker 8: I mean I remember as a kid, we would walk
Speaker 8: down to the corner.
Speaker 6: Store like a block or so.
Speaker 8: Yeah, my like my parents were like whatever, just don't die.
Speaker 8: We'd walked out of like, Okay, I'm kind of slushy,
Speaker 8: and absolute treasure was buying a pack of candy cigarettes
Speaker 8: as a child. Yes I know they still sell them,
Speaker 8: but as a child there's Spretty Steers and they're like, look,
Speaker 8: I'm smoking, which is so hilarious that we do use
Speaker 8: it as a proxy for like other forbidden things.
Speaker 5: Well, truit. It's funny because we sell in my store.
Speaker 5: So I have a store called True Treats, right, and
Speaker 5: so it's in Harper's Ferry, and so we get to
Speaker 5: observe how people use candy. And of course our best seller.
Speaker 5: I mean, we wanted to be the big things, but
Speaker 5: it's candy cigarettes. It's the best sell. So they actually
Speaker 5: go back to the late eighteen hundreds when they're selling
Speaker 5: working class kids, and the working class kids want to
Speaker 5: be like grown ums like Hershey, and you know, they
Speaker 5: made chocolate cigarettes, so the kids would buy these chocolate cigarettes.
Speaker 5: I do want to tell you also, you have to
Speaker 5: remember stay in the context of time for me for
Speaker 5: a minute. Right. They also they also sell guns, but
Speaker 5: the guns were made out of glass, and then inside
Speaker 5: the barrel of the guns they have these little candy
Speaker 5: balls and kids would want they're buying because they want
Speaker 5: the probably they want the little glass guns, but they
Speaker 5: also get candy or vice versa. Who knows which. By
Speaker 5: the nineteen forties it became the bubblegum cigarette, and that
Speaker 5: was when you could blow the sugar out and it
Speaker 5: would look like smoke. And then people got suspicious that
Speaker 5: their kids would start smoking because they had these candy cigarettes.
Speaker 5: May I tell you my personal experience, Yes, you may.
Speaker 5: I did enjoy candy cigarettes, and I did smoke cigarettes,
Speaker 5: of course, but it had nothing to do with the
Speaker 5: candy cigarettes. It had to do with Jenice Joplin because
Speaker 5: you cannot wear a lot of jewelry and drink Southern
Speaker 5: comfort and he had tike without a cigarette in your hand.
Speaker 5: So that fifteen years of smoking cigarettes. But it had
Speaker 5: nothing to do with the kid.
Speaker 6: Oh I love her. You know.
Speaker 5: In those days, it's just what you did.
Speaker 6: It was just a different time. It was a slightly
Speaker 6: different era.
Speaker 8: I mean, luckily I never smoked, but I remember as
Speaker 8: a kid being like the bubblegum ones where you could
Speaker 8: blow it out because my parents smoked, so I was like, oh,
Speaker 8: I'm almost like them. But I began to associate cigarettes
Speaker 8: with like my mom being stressed out at tax time.
Speaker 8: So luckily my parents stressed smoking was not the same
Speaker 8: as like Jenna Stoplet. I'm sorry, mom, but so it
Speaker 8: taught you. Yeah, what about when candy bars came on
Speaker 8: the scene. When did we go from a box of
Speaker 8: four bond bonds to smushing the bond bonds together into
Speaker 8: one block.
Speaker 5: That happened, you see, another really fascinating thing. So that
Speaker 5: started with the Fry family of England in the eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 5: The stuffed thing with called combination candy bars, peanut two
Speaker 5: and so on. Those came around the nineteen twenties. Actually
Speaker 5: they became popular then they were used during wartime. So
Speaker 5: in World War One, in the first rations ever, the
Speaker 5: government gave them candy bars because it had sugar, which
Speaker 5: they really needed. It had not it had other fruits
Speaker 5: in it, and they gave them candy bars and they
Speaker 5: loved it. They came back and proclaimed glory of candy bars,
Speaker 5: and candy bars took off. But what's really important here, right,
Speaker 5: and this is the versatility of candy. You bet an't
Speaker 5: be back on your show because I'm just getting going.
Speaker 5: The versatility of chocolate bars is amazing because they now
Speaker 5: think about this. Chocolate bars were sold as a meal
Speaker 5: in a bar during the depression, and they were also
Speaker 5: sold as energy bars, fast energy bars, and people bought
Speaker 5: them for that. They didn't have money. They went on
Speaker 5: they got a candy bar and they felt that they
Speaker 5: were okay. Right, So now, and this is the bizarre
Speaker 5: thing about candy. We eat it and we don't know
Speaker 5: we're eating it. You take your average energy bar that
Speaker 5: has a brown label and is very serious and it
Speaker 5: has a sports thing on it, like somebody rubbing, like
Speaker 5: cartoon thing. Right, you're eating a candy bar. It's to say,
Speaker 5: you know, don't give me that. You can put all
Speaker 5: the vitamins you want on the wrapper. It is a
Speaker 5: candy bar. And the way it's marketed is no different
Speaker 5: from the way it was marketed when the National Convections
Speaker 5: Association was marketing it in the nineteen twenties and thirties.
Speaker 8: So while the first chocolate bars were made in the
Speaker 8: mid eighteen hundreds, they did in fact take off in
Speaker 8: demand after the world went to war and chocolate bars
Speaker 8: were food for the troops. They were called d rations.
Speaker 8: They were made by Hershey in nineteen thirty seven at
Speaker 8: the behest of one Captain Paul Logan, who needed some
Speaker 8: chow for the troops that could handle high temperatures. Was
Speaker 8: highly caloric, and to prevent soldiers from eating them too fast,
Speaker 8: had to taste quote just a little better than a
Speaker 8: boiled potato. So the d rations went off to war
Speaker 8: soldiers were like, it doesn't taste great, and it hurts
Speaker 8: my teeth to bite it, but again, it's the job done.
Speaker 6: Now.
Speaker 8: The first candy bars, though those came about in the
Speaker 8: early nineteen hundreds. In nineteen twelve there was a marshmallow
Speaker 8: nougat peanut confection called the Googoo Cluster, and shortly after
Speaker 8: came peanut chees, which were invented by an immigrant from
Speaker 8: Romania as a ration for World War One soldiers who
Speaker 8: loved it. Now, who else loves the chocolate and molasses
Speaker 8: peanut cheese?
Speaker 6: Me?
Speaker 8: Also vegans. My vegan friends always go for the peanut cheese,
Speaker 8: but not so fast.
Speaker 6: I have a little bit.
Speaker 8: Of bad news because some sugar is refined using bone
Speaker 8: char and some glycerine in the ingredient lists can come
Speaker 8: from animal sources, and peanut chees and many other candies
Speaker 8: contain hydrogenated palm kernel oil, which I'm so sorry, big downer,
Speaker 8: can lead to deforestation and peril for many species, including orangutans.
Speaker 8: So other folks have said peanut jews are not cruelty
Speaker 8: free or kind. What about Kind bars? Well, when Susan
Speaker 8: says we eat it and we don't know we're eating it,
Speaker 8: she's talking about how many candy bars started out as
Speaker 8: energy bars, and how many present day energy bars are
Speaker 8: pretty much candy bars. And about a decade ago, the
Speaker 8: FDA did a SmackDown to four flavors of Kind bar
Speaker 8: and made them stop touting themselves as healthy, as the
Speaker 8: content of saturated fat was too high. And about a
Speaker 8: year later, Kind published a release saying that Kind sought
Speaker 8: to better educate itself on the regulation in question, and
Speaker 8: because the fats came from nuts, the FDA forgave them.
Speaker 8: They buried that hatchet. But yes, myself, as a college
Speaker 8: student who sometimes made negative dollars on commission working for
Speaker 8: Circuit City selling electronics, and I would look for change
Speaker 8: under my floor mats to eat us snickers for lunch.
Speaker 8: I get it today's energy bars sometimes or just yesterday's
Speaker 8: candy bars, but more.
Speaker 5: Expensive, very important, right.
Speaker 8: I mean, yeah, we've got one in the bottom of
Speaker 8: the bag in case we get hungry. And you know,
Speaker 8: it's a lifesaver when you get stuck in traffic.
Speaker 5: Right, of course, it's food. And they used to say
Speaker 5: even candy is good. Food eats him every day, that
Speaker 5: was what they would say.
Speaker 8: But before they morphed into energy bars. Of course, during
Speaker 8: the World Wars, a lot of resources were headed overseas,
Speaker 8: so things at home were limited, and Americans were issued
Speaker 8: these ration books with stamps that they could turn in
Speaker 8: to limit their purchases of things like meat and cooking
Speaker 8: whale and canned foods, and of course sugar.
Speaker 5: So people here didn't have at home had sugar rations.
Speaker 5: We all know that they didn't have much sugar. After
Speaker 5: these events, particularly the Wars and particularly World War Two, well,
Speaker 5: the world won into sugar was back, and it came
Speaker 5: back in the form of candy, which people still considered medicinal.
Speaker 5: So grandmothers and our grandmothers and their grandmothers would go
Speaker 5: and buy tons of candy and they would have candy
Speaker 5: bulls and they would put the candy in it. And
Speaker 5: why because now sugar was back, and you know what
Speaker 5: that meant that meant things were good again. Peace was here,
Speaker 5: We are affluent. It was a son of affluence, meaning
Speaker 5: we had jobs again, meaning we could buy things. So
Speaker 5: candy was the symbol of all of that, so important
Speaker 5: that these grandmothers carried it in their purses and these
Speaker 5: grandfathers kept it in their workshops. And when these kids
Speaker 5: like me, my great aunts and my grandmother gave me
Speaker 5: the candy was a sign of love, and it was
Speaker 5: the sign that everything's all right, We're gonna be okay,
Speaker 5: and things are good. And it stayed that way up
Speaker 5: until we got really uptight in the sixties and seventies
Speaker 5: and still ate the candy, but pretended that we didn't.
Speaker 5: So candy morphed into stuff like energy bars and we
Speaker 5: still eat it, and gummy vitamins.
Speaker 8: And gummy vitamins which I ate some this morning. So
Speaker 8: you know, a Turkish delight with magnesium and it essentially.
Speaker 6: More on corn syrup in a bit.
Speaker 8: But there are many types of sugars, and they all
Speaker 8: fall under monosaccharides or die saccharides, but your body digests
Speaker 8: them into glucose. And for more on what a carb
Speaker 8: actually is, we have a glycology episode as well as
Speaker 8: a diapetology episode.
Speaker 5: So the reality is that we've always had sugar. We've
Speaker 5: always had a lot of sugar. It comes from lots
Speaker 5: of different places. It comes from sorghum, which is a
Speaker 5: grain corpo hydrate that becomes a sugar when it's processed.
Speaker 5: It comes from raspberry leaves, and you know, all different things.
Speaker 5: So yeah, we've always had it. We being most Americans
Speaker 5: say in the seventeen hundreds, if you were enslaved, you
Speaker 5: were forced to make it under dire conditions. You did
Speaker 5: have the molasses, which is the dregs of the cane
Speaker 5: sugar production. So a lot of people didn't have cane sugar,
Speaker 5: but they had a lot of sugar. They have plenty
Speaker 5: of sugar. What happened is corn syrup is very versatile,
Speaker 5: and so they started making high fructose corn syrup, which
Speaker 5: had two purposes. It cuts them candy through the machinery
Speaker 5: and it made it sweeter. And now all of a sudden,
Speaker 5: everybody thinks corn syrup is really really bad for you,
Speaker 5: and coin syrup probably is really really bad for you,
Speaker 5: depending on the corn syrup you get and how processed
Speaker 5: it is.
Speaker 6: Hang on a sec for that.
Speaker 8: But when it comes to sugar being harmful, what about
Speaker 8: less on a biological or molecular scale and more from
Speaker 8: a social and humanitarian standpoint.
Speaker 5: The abolitionist had a movement which was the free Products movement,
Speaker 5: and what they would do, I've heard also is free
Speaker 5: produce movement. But what they would do is boycott anything
Speaker 5: that was made with quote, the blood and sweat of slaves.
Speaker 5: If we boycott cane sugar, then we'll make it unnecessary
Speaker 5: for them to hold people in enslavement because they're not
Speaker 5: going to be making money from it, because nobody's getting
Speaker 5: the goods of slave people are making. But they still
Speaker 5: needed sugar. They still had to have sugar. What did
Speaker 5: they use. They use maple, which is hard to get.
Speaker 5: They use that. They used sergum, which they boiled, and
Speaker 5: the ones in the north discovered in the eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 5: not knowing the enslaved people were using it since they
Speaker 5: first came over in the sixteen hundreds. And they used
Speaker 5: beet sugar, which grows in cold weather, and so it's
Speaker 5: a big sugar beet. It's not the beat they eat
Speaker 5: for dinner, and it grows in cold weather, so unlike
Speaker 5: cane sugar, which is dependent on as hot climates. That's unnatural.
Speaker 5: Here they could have the beet sugar, and those were
Speaker 5: the sugars that became most of the sugars Americans used
Speaker 5: for decades after the Civil War and still today.
Speaker 6: Do we want to get into corn syrup? Do we
Speaker 6: go there?
Speaker 8: Okay, So this isn't aside, This is not an entire episode.
Speaker 8: So I'm gonna bottle up a lot of feelings about
Speaker 8: SODA's and we're just gonna give you a little sip
Speaker 8: of history. So, table sugar is sucrose, and fructose is
Speaker 8: a different type of sugar. It's sweeter than sucrosse. Fructose
Speaker 8: occurs obviously in nature all over the place. Now, eventually
Speaker 8: your body breaks it all down into glucose. But in
Speaker 8: the nineteen sixties, manufacturers figured out how to chemically convert
Speaker 8: some of the existing glucose in corn syrup into fructose,
Speaker 8: making the little gremlin that we see on so many
Speaker 8: ingredient lists high frucit doose corn syrup. Now, nutritionally there
Speaker 8: shouldn't be a difference, but researchers are still figuring that out.
Speaker 8: But the Wikipedia for high fructose corn syrup is very
Speaker 8: much like all good nothing to see here. I'm gonna
Speaker 8: guess there are some high fructose executives that are hopping
Speaker 8: on there editing it because a bop through medical journals
Speaker 8: is like, girl, don't do it, high fructose, don't go
Speaker 8: there again. Research is still out, but a twenty twenty
Speaker 8: one article by the National Cancer Institute titled inquisitively does
Speaker 8: too much fructose help colorectal cancers grow? Details how one
Speaker 8: twenty nineteen studies show that feeding high frctose corn syrup
Speaker 8: to mice prone to developing intestinal tumors could increase the
Speaker 8: size and the aggressiveness of colorectal tumors. And many many
Speaker 8: other papers link over consumption of all sugars, including fruit dose,
Speaker 8: to everything from metabolic syndromes to asthma. Now, in twenty eighteen,
Speaker 8: the average American consumed sixty two pounds of refined sugars.
Speaker 8: In some countries, sodas are made with cane sugar, but
Speaker 8: the US government is very pro corn, so high fructose
Speaker 8: corn syrup is more readily available in everything. Now, remember
Speaker 8: entirely eliminating high fructose corn syrup will not save your
Speaker 8: life if you're going wild with a ton of other sugars.
Speaker 8: It may affect your body differently, but the main problem
Speaker 8: is it's just in a lot of things. High fructose
Speaker 8: corn syrup is like if your friend's magician friend showed
Speaker 8: up at every party and you're like, who invited him?
Speaker 8: I kind of can't deal right now. Small dose is people,
Speaker 8: But we'll talk about that how to eat candy in
Speaker 8: a healthier way later in the episode. Now, on the
Speaker 8: topic of reviled corn products, let's talk about one candy
Speaker 8: is really stuck in your craw and that is candy corn.
Speaker 6: What even is it?
Speaker 8: Okay, it's made with sugar, but of course corn syrup,
Speaker 8: of course, sesame oil, artificial probably vanilla flavor, gelatin, and
Speaker 8: a glaze that contains a secretion from bucks begans. You're
Speaker 8: off the hook on candy corn. You can turn this
Speaker 8: down for ethical reasons. But candy corn. It was born
Speaker 8: in late eighteen hundreds, and it was marketed toward rural populations,
Speaker 8: of course, and it once bore the name chicken feed.
Speaker 8: This was a candy called chicken feed, and according to
Speaker 8: Susan's research, workers were often burned trying to successfully pour
Speaker 8: the hot colored sugar into the molds people suffered to
Speaker 8: make candy corn. If you still enjoy candy corn, I'm
Speaker 8: going to saddle you with an unsettling fact. Brox is
Speaker 8: one of the biggest producers of candy corn, and they
Speaker 8: rolled out a Turkey Dinner flavored variation with notes of
Speaker 8: oniony stuffing, roasted bird meat, green beans, cranberry sauce, carrots,
Speaker 8: and sweet potatoes. Although later iterations swapped out those root
Speaker 8: vegetables with apple pie and coffee. I think they kept
Speaker 8: the turkey and oniony flavors. This was a few years ago.
Speaker 8: I couldn't find it anywhere on the market. Maybe the
Speaker 8: world is just too tough right now, and Brox is like,
Speaker 8: we'll bring it back when things calm down.
Speaker 6: Can I ask you some questions from listeners?
Speaker 5: From what?
Speaker 8: From listeners who wrote in already they know you're coming.
Speaker 5: Out, Oh listen, listening now.
Speaker 8: No they're not listening now, but they sent in quite no, no, no,
Speaker 8: they sent in thirty six pages of questions for you.
Speaker 6: We won't ask all of them. I'm happy, yeah, right.
Speaker 5: Can I just tell you Alli really fast? I get
Speaker 5: into you so much, and they are always boring and
Speaker 5: after a while time I assist, and it's called through them,
Speaker 5: because I can't do that between you meet Boring and
Speaker 5: you're like, man, I would be interviewed by you any
Speaker 5: day or night.
Speaker 6: I'm telling you, yes.
Speaker 5: It's like, this is great. I'm really happy.
Speaker 8: And we are so happy to We're also happy to
Speaker 8: support a cause of Susan's choosing, and this week she
Speaker 8: chose her local Animal Welfare Society of Jefferson County, which
Speaker 8: provides housing and adoption services for abandoned, surrendered, neglected, abused,
Speaker 8: and unwanted dogs, puppies, cats, and kittens until they're adopted.
Speaker 8: And I looked at their website for the Animal Welfare
Speaker 8: Society of Jefferson County, and they have several very sweet
Speaker 8: kiddies and a few dogs, one of whom is named
Speaker 8: Gravy Train. So a donation will go to them in
Speaker 8: Susan's honor, and that was made possible by sponsors of
Speaker 8: the show.
Speaker 1: Virgin Media Broadband is smooth? How smooth you ask, Well,
Speaker 1: imagine you're a big old wall rush and rather than
Speaker 1: lumbering around a glacier avoiding polar bears, you're on a
Speaker 1: lake driving a speedboat three thousand kilos of mollusk, munching, magnificence,
Speaker 1: feeling the wind in your whiskers and the sun on you.
Speaker 2: Have big lubbery face. That's the kind of smoothness you feel.
Speaker 2: With ninety nine point nine percent broadband reliability available nationwide
Speaker 2: Virgin Media It's playtime subject to.
Speaker 3: A fatal availability. Teasency's apply for broadband reliability see Virgin
Speaker 3: Media dot I forwards that proof.
Speaker 4: Drivers know what trouble sounds like.
Speaker 6: No, no, okay forward, Oh no, no.
Speaker 4: Pretty no, That's why they get covered from Ireland's soundest
Speaker 4: car insurance provider, Supervalue Insurance.
Speaker 6: Thanks for calling us in and don't beat yourself up
Speaker 6: about it.
Speaker 8: Sure, I'm driving ten years and parallel parking still battle,
Speaker 8: isn't me?
Speaker 4: Get a code from Supervalue Car Insurance to get ten
Speaker 4: percent off online.
Speaker 7: And we'll even throw in forty euroin vouchers. Teasncy's apply.
Speaker 7: Vouchers include two twenty euro or forty eurospent.
Speaker 4: This car insurance is underwritten by AX Insurance, Stack Supervalue
Speaker 4: Financial Services, Stack Trading and Supervalue Insurance is regulated by
Speaker 4: the Central Bank of Ireland.
Speaker 9: Do you know what real power is? It's knowing you're
Speaker 9: on the same rate for energy all day, every day
Speaker 9: with a Smart all Day plan from Board Gosh Energy,
Speaker 9: save up to eight hundred and eighty euro on dual
Speaker 9: fuel plus get a two hundred and thirty five euro
Speaker 9: O welcome bonus switch today at Boardgosh Energy Dot I
Speaker 9: E Board Gosh Energy Know your.
Speaker 3: Power estimating annual bill of twenty six hundred and twenty
Speaker 3: nine your own new customers Only thirty percent is kain
Speaker 3: of Smart all day electricity unit rates in twenty nine
Speaker 3: percent of gas unit rates.
Speaker 6: See Portcush Energy Dot E for fourties and ceas Hey Mark,
Speaker 6: how are you?
Speaker 3: Ah?
Speaker 1: I'm not great a sore throat.
Speaker 6: I think I'm coming down with cold.
Speaker 10: Oh no, you should try a Vogel sore throat spray.
Speaker 10: It's a natural remedy with echination and sage and can
Speaker 10: treat symptoms of coals and flus, including sore throats.
Speaker 1: Perfect.
Speaker 2: I'd give that a try.
Speaker 10: So we leave sore throat symptoms with a Vogel Aquina
Speaker 10: four sore throat spray, made from achinasia and sage herbs
Speaker 10: and designed to reach irritated parts of the throat. Available
Speaker 10: from health stores and pharmacies and white always read the leaflet.
Speaker 8: Moving on, this question was asked by Cool next door,
Speaker 8: who said, my grandmother loves circus peanuts, but I find
Speaker 8: even the thought of them somewhat nauseating. Does nostalgia play
Speaker 8: a part in those preferences? Cool, You're not alone? Some
Speaker 8: people asked Andy Pepper and Daniel Smanuel wanted to know
Speaker 8: what your thoughts are yea or nay on the ever
Speaker 8: polarizing orange circus peanuts.
Speaker 6: Have you had those? Those like marshmallowy? What are those?
Speaker 6: How do you feel about them?
Speaker 5: All right? I would say we did a poll once
Speaker 5: to try to figure out when people coming in a store,
Speaker 5: what do people think? It's absolutely polarizing. So this is
Speaker 5: when I want to tell them. You're ready not it off,
Speaker 5: cut it out. I'm going to tell you the story
Speaker 5: is circus peanuts. And as they would say, no pun intended.
Speaker 5: I'm not to be fast Cirtacus peanuts, who really made
Speaker 5: in the late eighteen hundreds for circus because the circuses
Speaker 5: had these real it's very unfortunate, but they had these
Speaker 5: elephants that they would come to poor things, and so
Speaker 5: we would all get circus peanuts. They have big newspaper
Speaker 5: ads the Circus is coming by your Circus Peanuts now
Speaker 5: full page in the newspapers. These candies were so popular
Speaker 5: that they were all around the country. They were different colors,
Speaker 5: They were beloved by one and all I so much
Speaker 5: so they became the prototype for drum roll if you please,
Speaker 5: the Lucky Charm cereal. No, yeah, I was.
Speaker 6: Really really because those are so crunchy.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so knock it off, guys. It's a great candy,
Speaker 5: and it has fascinating history and has built into the
Speaker 5: fabric of who we are. When you were a little kid,
Speaker 5: you're picking out the Lucky Charms Charms oh cereal? Right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 5: you know circus peanuts in a grown up form.
Speaker 8: So yes, we know that these weird orange colored, banana
Speaker 8: flavored marshmallow tragedies were an ingredient in the Lucky Charms prototype,
Speaker 8: and history, though, gets muddy about their circus origins. But
Speaker 8: as one book called Food Bites, The Science of the
Speaker 8: Foods We Eat notes, the history of Circus peanuts is clouded,
Speaker 8: as with most foods, but perhaps for Circus peanuts it's
Speaker 8: because nobody wants to admit that they were responsible for
Speaker 8: developing this much maligned product. But yeah, also on the
Speaker 8: topic of books. You can find out more about lucky
Speaker 8: charms and other cereals in Susan's book Fun Foods of
Speaker 8: America Outrageous Delights, celebrated brands, and iconic recipes. And I
Speaker 8: never would have suspected that circus peanuts, which have the
Speaker 8: texture of an old eraser, would have led to one
Speaker 8: of my favorite well rounded breakfasts containing the food group
Speaker 8: of marshmallows. Do they need to get more stale? I
Speaker 8: feel like if you have a soft marshmallows one thing,
Speaker 8: and then if you are crunchy like you charm, but
Speaker 8: there's like some in between where your body doesn't trust it.
Speaker 5: Well, you know, that's an excellent question, and it's a
Speaker 5: whole other subject. So only let me tell you that
Speaker 5: our bodies like things that are crunchy, and this is
Speaker 5: from my new book. Our bodies like things that are crunchy,
Speaker 5: which is why you find advertisements for crunchy things, right,
Speaker 5: And our bodies don't trust things that are bitter, and
Speaker 5: our bodies tell us if it's bitter, it's poisonous.
Speaker 8: You can see our Gustatology episode which is all about
Speaker 8: taste buds and why we love some things and gag
Speaker 8: out others as if they were haunted. Okay, Hana Bee
Speaker 8: wants to know more about Marzapan. They love it, but
Speaker 8: they know it's a very polarizing type of sweetness. And
Speaker 8: part of the fun is that it comes in such
Speaker 8: cute little shapes and designs. So sculpting Marzapan was that
Speaker 8: considered a very fancy treat.
Speaker 6: They want to know.
Speaker 5: Okay, so it's polarizing. So now we've had two questions.
Speaker 5: Both of them are polarizing candy, So batting a thousand
Speaker 5: here and fine with me. So they actually go all
Speaker 5: the way back to the ancient Romans. It had to
Speaker 5: be in a place where the almends grew because almonds
Speaker 5: were really significant for many reasons, and one of them
Speaker 5: was a sign of the changing of the seasons, the
Speaker 5: beginning of life, birth, renewal, as well as new beginnings.
Speaker 5: So it had all of these values to it. It
Speaker 5: was the first tree in the Middle East to flower,
Speaker 5: and so it became really important and biblical. You know,
Speaker 5: the rod of Oh my gosh, of Aaron was it?
Speaker 8: So yeah, Aaron was the brother of Moses and probably
Speaker 8: annoyed that everyone was like, yo, how is Moses man
Speaker 8: tell Moses to hit me up. But Aaron had a
Speaker 8: rod too, and it was said to have been endowed
Speaker 8: with magical powers, and it miraculously sprouted blossoms and almonds
Speaker 8: to show that God thought Aaron was cool. So he's like, oh, okay,
Speaker 8: you pardoned some sees well, I have an almond Wand in.
Speaker 5: The Bible you see a lot of the use of omens,
Speaker 5: for example. So the Marsapian was made to be an
Speaker 5: almond paste and almond confection, and it was the almond
Speaker 5: that gave Marcipient its cloud and importance. The Marsipian was
Speaker 5: so significant that they would have entire tables with a
Speaker 5: pig with an apple and its mouth, they would have
Speaker 5: voluptuous fruits, all of it made by Marsapian. Marsapian was
Speaker 5: really important. And the reason why today we have Marcipient
Speaker 5: at Easter that kind of thing is because of that
Speaker 5: ancient use of it. So the Marscipient and the shapes
Speaker 5: is today, it ain't nothing like it used to be.
Speaker 6: I do love the little sculptures though it is.
Speaker 8: It does make me want to sit down and have
Speaker 8: craft night and sculpt little fruit pipiggies and stuff.
Speaker 5: Like that always sculpted, but like really like towers, like
Speaker 5: towers on a table made out of Marsapian.
Speaker 6: It took me a while, like Mars of Panda. I
Speaker 6: was like, what's happening? But I love it.
Speaker 8: Another polarizing flavor because people have their favorites. Row and Tree,
Speaker 8: Rachel Pristacco, Ms Carter of Mars, Sugarpuff, Datikins, Bernard Robin,
Speaker 8: Evan Davis, Crystal Wilson, Christine Valdez, and Brian Shenanigans. They
Speaker 8: all want to know, in Rachel's words, how do they
Speaker 8: make sour candy sour?
Speaker 6: What are they coated with?
Speaker 8: Roe and Tree is obsessed with it, but wants to
Speaker 8: know why sour candies were developed. And Brian also mentioned
Speaker 8: that they can help with nausea while pregnant.
Speaker 6: But yeah, sour candy, I'm drooling thinking about it. What's
Speaker 6: the all?
Speaker 5: Okay, sour candies say the lemon sours, right, They're really
Speaker 5: important because say in the war, or if you're traveling somewhere,
Speaker 5: or even if you're nauseous, sour candies were there to
Speaker 5: make you salivate so that if you're in war, you
Speaker 5: don't feel as thirsty or they make you salivate, and
Speaker 5: that suites your throat because now you're all the glycoon
Speaker 5: is getting down. So they had really important use, but
Speaker 5: they were not as sour as they are now. That
Speaker 5: isn't really how it works. If you have a lemon
Speaker 5: and you leave it out for a couple of days,
Speaker 5: it's not going sour.
Speaker 8: And in this case, what makes a lot of sour
Speaker 8: candies make your mouth kind of pucker in and implode
Speaker 8: is what's called sour sanding with additional acid like citric
Speaker 8: or tartaric acid. How do you quantify what is the
Speaker 8: most sourist The pH scale. So scientists they use the
Speaker 8: pH scale to measure a substance acidity, or the strength
Speaker 8: of the acid that it contains. More acidic a substance,
Speaker 8: the lower it scores on the pH scale. So in
Speaker 8: a pamphlet titled The Power of Sour in Your Mouth,
Speaker 8: which was distributed by the Minnesota Dental Association, water has
Speaker 8: a pH of seven.
Speaker 6: Okay, neutral.
Speaker 8: Now the lower you go, again, the more acidic something is.
Speaker 8: Vinegar is about a two point two, and stomach acid
Speaker 8: and lemon juice those hit about a two. So I
Speaker 8: scooted my eyes right down that candy list to see
Speaker 8: what was the lowest pH and the top three sour
Speaker 8: treats are altoid Mango sours with a pH of one
Speaker 8: point nine. That's more acidic than stomach acid. Wonka fun
Speaker 8: dip powder is more acidic at one point eight. And
Speaker 8: the top measured sour candy was Warhead's sour Spray one
Speaker 8: point six. There was one more thing on the list
Speaker 8: below that, and I was like, who, what's that? And
Speaker 8: it was something at one point zero and that was
Speaker 8: battery acid. Warhead Sour Spray comes in it just over
Speaker 8: half a point on the pH scale over battery acid.
Speaker 8: So if you've ever wondered why hot sauce can clean
Speaker 8: your pennies, it's the vinegar. It's the acid, which again
Speaker 8: is less acidic than a Warhead sour spray. So let's
Speaker 8: do a wellness check on your teeth, shall we. The
Speaker 8: Journal of the American Dental Association, in a paper titled
Speaker 8: in Vitro Enamel Erosion associated with commercially available original and
Speaker 8: sour candies that the potential for erosion associated with sour
Speaker 8: candies has been identified as a new and emerging concern,
Speaker 8: So rinse your mouth after eating, or maybe our biggest
Speaker 8: takeaway from this is to just obtain some warhead sour spray.
Speaker 8: From the reviews, the watermelon is the most sour. Maybe
Speaker 8: you just want to have this in your purse when
Speaker 8: walking alone at night as a weapon.
Speaker 5: And so sour is the new flavor of jujuur And
Speaker 5: so now they're like, we're really so soury a pucker
Speaker 5: up candy and you can't stand it. This is all
Speaker 5: about manufacturing kids, and bet it get used to it
Speaker 5: because it's everything seems to be commercialized in candy is
Speaker 5: no exception. Originally, though, those sour candies were really beneficial
Speaker 5: and really purposeful and really symbolic because, as I mentioned,
Speaker 5: these candies were available for everybody. And if you have
Speaker 5: a sore throat and you have a soh while, you
Speaker 5: just feel better. If you're nauseous, the sucking on it
Speaker 5: clears up your ears. Same thing.
Speaker 8: I've heard that it can help with a panic attack
Speaker 8: because it jolts your brain into your physicality instead of.
Speaker 5: Your head, so it distracts you.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, it distracts you.
Speaker 8: And according to a twenty sixteen study in the Journal
Speaker 8: of Psychopathology and Behavioral Assessment, is distraction an adaptive or
Speaker 8: maladaptive strategy for emotion regulation. A person oriented approach distracting
Speaker 8: yourself with physical sensations may be either adaptive or maladaptive,
Speaker 8: depending on whether it's combined with an attitude of acceptance,
Speaker 8: which is helpful, or just avoidance, which is not so
Speaker 8: much helpful. Now, if you don't have something sour on hand,
Speaker 8: if you're having anxiety or a panic attack, you can
Speaker 8: always do some other mindfulness, like feeling your inhalations as
Speaker 8: you take deep breaths, or trying to identify the sounds
Speaker 8: you can hear or the smells you maybe saying, or
Speaker 8: doing a body scan meditation, feeling all the parts of
Speaker 8: your body in succession, going up from your toes and saying,
Speaker 8: this is a feeling I'm having, but it's going to
Speaker 8: pass like clouds. And if that sounds too hard and
Speaker 8: you're like, give me the sour stuff, bitch, then I
Speaker 8: can direct you toward those warhead sour sprays, which, according
Speaker 8: to an Amazon review from a user named Tiffany, I
Speaker 8: love watermelon, especially when my brain decides to be mean
Speaker 8: to me. Another Amazon reviewer named Jane wrote that when
Speaker 8: a panic attack strikes quote I use this sour taste
Speaker 8: to redirect my brain to worry about the sour and
Speaker 8: not what's making me anxious. The only thing I would
Speaker 8: ask is to make them more sour jay. That would
Speaker 8: be battery acid. So let's stick to those warheads for now.
Speaker 8: But as long as we are staying away from toxic substances.
Speaker 8: Another user said that sour warhead spray quote genuinely helped
Speaker 8: me quit vaping after eight years of trying and failing.
Speaker 8: So who knew warheads that are actually saving lives? Now,
Speaker 8: if you're thinking that these are niche interests, let's talk
Speaker 8: about what's popular. A few patrons asked, including Kaylin Joviac,
Speaker 8: Chris Curious Marico, and Colorado o'keith. First time question asker
Speaker 8: it wants to know if there's a candy by weight
Speaker 8: that's the most consumed every year or if it changes
Speaker 8: much over time, Like, is there one candy that is
Speaker 8: hands down more popular you know with consumers across the world.
Speaker 5: Well, the most popular candy around the world is chocolate.
Speaker 5: So my aravex for tease is North America. But I
Speaker 5: know that around the world you have many iterations of
Speaker 5: chocolate in depending where you are doc chocolate takes precedents
Speaker 5: or male chocolate does. So it's really hard to narrow
Speaker 5: down and say which one by the pound is going
Speaker 5: to win out. But I would put my bet on
Speaker 5: Choclate's made by Hershey, okay. And the reason is that
Speaker 5: Hershey has mastered the art of cheap chocolate. It's affordable
Speaker 5: and abundant, and it has a really good, albeit false
Speaker 5: story behind it.
Speaker 6: And what's the flimflam with the Hershey story.
Speaker 5: The flim flemen is that Milton Hershey never invented anything
Speaker 5: except marketing prowess. He was great at inventing marketing schemes,
Speaker 5: and he put the almond in the chocolate bar. He
Speaker 5: dropped out of grammar school. His mother he is a Mennonite.
Speaker 5: His mother and father were divorced. How's that in the
Speaker 5: late eighteen hundreds. They figured, they'll teach me to make
Speaker 5: ice cream in the candy, so at least the poor
Speaker 5: kid could have a job, right, And what he wound
Speaker 5: up doing was learning from other people. So overwhelmingly what
Speaker 5: he created at the beginning were things that he didn't invent.
Speaker 5: He didn't invent the caramel. He got that off of
Speaker 5: some guy in Denver. He didn't invent the kiss, it
Speaker 5: was an existing candy, and he would spy. He would
Speaker 5: go to Europe and he'd go spy in the candy companies.
Speaker 5: But they were all spying on each other, so that
Speaker 5: wasn't But the beauty and the lost opportunity of Milton
Speaker 5: Hershey is that Milton Hershey, as the company presents it
Speaker 5: is a complete myth. He was not Spider Man. He
Speaker 5: was a guy who was unable to do so many
Speaker 5: things that many of us take for granted because we
Speaker 5: come from families that at least were supportive. His father
Speaker 5: took off and then wound up bankrupting him every time
Speaker 5: they met up. There was no love in that. He
Speaker 5: didn't give him a wholesome Pennsylvania family by a long shot.
Speaker 5: But the good thing about Hershey, if they would just
Speaker 5: knock it off over it at that company, is that
Speaker 5: most people are not Spider Man. And if you look
Speaker 5: at Hershey Chocolate and somebody knocked it off and said,
Speaker 5: you know what, he was a terrible student. He had
Speaker 5: a dysfunctional family. His father was a jerk. It's probably
Speaker 5: a lot of hollering in their household, and he made it.
Speaker 5: And if you are a cedar. Even if you're flunking out,
Speaker 5: guess what, it doesn't matter. Find who you are and
Speaker 5: what you're good at, and do it, and you will
Speaker 5: make it just the way you should.
Speaker 8: So when Susan just says like his father was a jerk,
Speaker 8: it goes a bit deeper. So Milton Snavely Hershey's dad
Speaker 8: was Henry, and Henry, though he was an avid reader,
Speaker 8: was not an avid moneymaker. Well, he started a lot
Speaker 8: of businesses, but none of them succeeded, and he had
Speaker 8: a tendency to grab someone else's money, lose interest, fail,
Speaker 8: and then split down. And according to the nineteen seventy
Speaker 8: seven New York Times archival story Life with Father in
Speaker 8: his pre chocolate days, Dad Henry started a cabinetry company
Speaker 8: for displaying candy with Milton. But then Henry got distracted
Speaker 8: by the silver rush in Colorado and was like see
Speaker 8: a son, And Milton was like, dang, Dad, now I'm broke.
Speaker 8: Henny was like, dude, I'm sorry, come to Colorado. Let's
Speaker 8: mind some silver. So Milton scraped together some money and
Speaker 8: then found no silver, so Milton had to get a
Speaker 8: job with a caramel maker. Milton's like okay, I'm in
Speaker 8: the caramel business. And it was like smellulator dad. Milton
Speaker 8: high tailed it to Chicago, leaving his dad in the dust.
Speaker 8: But then Henry showed up in Chicago and was like, Milton,
Speaker 8: my boy, let me help you with the candy. And
Speaker 8: then Henry his dad gave a bunch of Milton's money
Speaker 8: away to one of his friends. Once again Milton was broke.
Speaker 8: He's like, Dad, I love you.
Speaker 6: You suck.
Speaker 8: Susan said that Henry and Milton's mom, Veronica Fanny Buckwalter
Speaker 8: Snavely Hirshley, were divorced, but they were more likely separated.
Speaker 8: Although I got way too far down the rabbit hole
Speaker 8: and I started tracking down Henry's census records, and in
Speaker 8: nineteen hundred he listed himself as a widow, although his
Speaker 8: estranged wife outlived him by several decades. Henry's nineteen hundred
Speaker 8: census record shows his occupation was quote invalid, but his
Speaker 8: obituary four years later stated that for a man of
Speaker 8: his years, his faculties were remarkably well preserved, and that
Speaker 8: he died suddenly of a heart issue after returning home
Speaker 8: from a two mile walk. It also says that Henry
Speaker 8: is survived by his wife. Two years earlier, he told
Speaker 8: the government had died even though she was still alive.
Speaker 8: So yes, Henry Hershey, father of Milton Hershey, the chocolateer.
Speaker 8: We might call him a bit of a scoundrel or
Speaker 8: a scamp, or a reprobate or rascal. Either way, Milton
Speaker 8: was a good son to Henry and Fanny, and though
Speaker 8: Milton and his wife Catherine could not bear children of
Speaker 8: their own, they opened an orphanage and a high quality
Speaker 8: education boarding school for impoverished kids, to which Milton quietly
Speaker 8: left his entire fortune after he died. And yeah, this
Speaker 8: was nineteen ten and at the time they only accepted
Speaker 8: males who were white. And yeah, that sucked. We do
Speaker 8: not like that, Milton. If you come back in another multiverse,
Speaker 8: please change that. But Milton was otherwise said to adhere
Speaker 8: to the religion of the Golden Rule. But yeah, Milton
Speaker 8: Hershey seems like a guy who was imperfect but tried
Speaker 8: to do some good things.
Speaker 5: Why are we doing that?
Speaker 8: I feel like you should be Hershey's CMO, like you
Speaker 8: should take over change the story, you know what I mean,
Speaker 8: because that is much more interesting.
Speaker 5: No, they don't like me. I went and I interviewed
Speaker 5: them from my last book, and the woman gave me
Speaker 5: very shortens.
Speaker 8: I think you tell their story better than they do. So, yeah,
Speaker 8: that's great to know. It endears me to him personally,
Speaker 8: but it yeah, okay. So Rebecca Fitchett and Marico Rica
Speaker 8: wanted to know. They said, I'm Mexican American and the
Speaker 8: nostalgic candies for me are all centered on Pemerindo chili
Speaker 8: and various forms of condensed milk. But wanted to know
Speaker 8: why some other candies are based on like whorehound and cloves.
Speaker 8: And Rebecca wanted to know what is whorehound? Why was
Speaker 8: it a popular flavor? Why is it not common now?
Speaker 8: Was that a New England thing and not a not
Speaker 8: a more like global southern thing.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so horehound is. By the way, if any of
Speaker 5: you live I live in West Virginia, I'm from Massachusetts,
Speaker 5: grow your own hoarhound. It's wonderful. It's of the mint family,
Speaker 5: and it has what is called hoary leaves, which means
Speaker 5: it looks like little hairs are coming out of it,
Speaker 5: and it has a stem with a little round, almost
Speaker 5: like rings around. It's absolutely gorgeous. And flowers from it.
Speaker 5: It came to North America around the fifteen hundred sometime
Speaker 5: around them, and it was used for sore throat and
Speaker 5: uses a remedy for upset stomachs, and people really loved it.
Speaker 5: Because they added some sugar, they made this candy which
Speaker 5: they really enjoyed, and it carried over. It's one of
Speaker 5: the candies much like peppermint, but even more so that
Speaker 5: has held on to its medicinal value. Horehound is an
Speaker 5: enigma of people for two reasons. One is hoorr. What
Speaker 5: do you mean by horror? And you know, believe me,
Speaker 5: we get our jokes about that number one. But number
Speaker 5: two is the flavor. So the flavor of hoarhound in
Speaker 5: its truest form as a candy is really really bitter,
Speaker 5: and our palettes aren't gared for that anymore. Recently, I
Speaker 5: would say, over the last fifty sixty years, we've had
Speaker 5: less and less of a tolerance for hoarhoum candy. What
Speaker 5: the candy makers are doing now, particularly the old timy ones,
Speaker 5: they're adding more sugar and now you still have the
Speaker 5: warhound flavor, but it's not what it really really should be.
Speaker 5: So great plant really does work. I believe from what
Speaker 5: I've heard from people. I'm not a doctor, but it
Speaker 5: seems to work for bad stomachs and for sore throats.
Speaker 8: And for more on this you can see the twenty
Speaker 8: seventeen Journal of Intercultural Ethnopharmacology paper Murubian Vulgari, a review
Speaker 8: on phytochemical and pharmacological aspects, which notes that the whorehound
Speaker 8: plant has reportedly pharmacological activities such as anti pain, anti spasmodic,
Speaker 8: anti hypertend, anti diabetic, gastro protective, anti inflammatory, anti microbial,
Speaker 8: anti cancer, antioxidant, and anti hepatoxic like liver toxic activity
Speaker 8: in traditional ethnobotany uses. It does concede, though that well
Speaker 8: used in traditional and folk medicines. Further scientific studies are
Speaker 8: needed to explore the clinical efficacy and the therapeutic effect
Speaker 8: of the plant.
Speaker 6: Now.
Speaker 8: I was reading that it's great for respiratory infections, and
Speaker 8: I was reading that as I was on the couch
Speaker 8: with a honking cough, and I was like, I want
Speaker 8: to get my mits on that, like post taste, because
Speaker 8: I feel like I have old timey consumption, and from
Speaker 8: what I've read, horehound has this earthy bitter licoricy root
Speaker 8: beer type flavor. And I was like, right now, I
Speaker 8: drink your grandpa's bath water if it cured my goose
Speaker 8: honk of a cough. And I was eating a ricola drop.
Speaker 8: I looked up the ingredients. There's a little horehound in there.
Speaker 6: So there you go.
Speaker 5: It really is old time, but it's from the old
Speaker 5: time palette in ours. Our palates are so limited now,
Speaker 5: and we have such a sparse vocabulary of what takes
Speaker 5: good within our mouths.
Speaker 8: So yeah, well, if you have time for a couple
Speaker 8: more questions, I would love to get through.
Speaker 5: Yeah, all the time you want.
Speaker 6: Yeah, amazing, Okay, great.
Speaker 8: Christian Jacobus and Chacaba's Christian Jacobus and Nathan mary And
Speaker 8: and Alice Rubbon all wanted to know, in Alice's words,
Speaker 8: who decided blue color is raspberry flavor? How did blue
Speaker 8: raspberry become a flavor?
Speaker 6: Is there such thing as a blue raspberry?
Speaker 5: There's not such a thing as very much that's blue
Speaker 5: that I know of in the whole natural world, besides
Speaker 5: blueberries and now some flowers. Okay, again, today's colors O
Speaker 5: get to make you want to eat them. So there's
Speaker 5: a whole process of associating the color with the flavor
Speaker 5: and then the smell, and all of that goes together
Speaker 5: to give you the blue raspberry, which doesn't exist in
Speaker 5: nature and doesn't by the way, it tastes like a raspberry, right, Yeah, no,
Speaker 5: I know, I eat raspberries. It doesn't taste like a raspberry.
Speaker 5: The snosberries taste like snosberries. So what you're essentially doing
Speaker 5: is you're eating laboratory made candy. If you love it
Speaker 5: and if you have attachment to it because you had
Speaker 5: it when you were a kid, don't worry about it.
Speaker 5: It's fun. But that really is the reason, and it
Speaker 5: is about the history of corporate candy making.
Speaker 6: I was wondering. I was like, was there an extinct
Speaker 6: raspberry that was blue and tasted like a slurpee that
Speaker 6: I'm just not unaware of?
Speaker 5: I wish?
Speaker 8: So according to a Bona Petite article titled what even
Speaker 8: is blue raspberry?
Speaker 6: Anyway?
Speaker 8: Which has an appropriate level of attitude, the flavor of
Speaker 8: blue raspberry is actually this chimera of cherry banana and
Speaker 8: citric acid, although if you ask the seven to eleven website,
Speaker 8: it does presently In the year of Our Lord twenty
Speaker 8: twenty four assert that this flavor is an extraction from
Speaker 8: the vibrant blue raspberry bushes on the secret Island of
Speaker 8: as miss and frankly, so many lawyers could make them
Speaker 8: take that down, and I'm kind of glad that they
Speaker 8: have it. My point is blue raspberries are catfishing us
Speaker 8: so hard and we're so smitten we can't even accept it.
Speaker 8: We had some great questions and other people are very
Speaker 8: polarized about.
Speaker 5: Certain candies I'm noticing.
Speaker 8: And Rachel m says my husband's black licorice was invented
Speaker 8: because they didn't have sugar.
Speaker 6: Any truth to that.
Speaker 8: Other people Teya Danealovic and Chicken Chumper both asked licorice candy?
Speaker 6: Why two people asked that?
Speaker 8: And Becky, this secgress scientist said salty European liquorice?
Speaker 6: Is it candy? Is it savory? So a lot of
Speaker 6: people say they love black licorice.
Speaker 8: Ryan Ketchum, Dylan Vee, who asks, can I justify eating
Speaker 8: a lot of this? And John Champion of licorice.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Hi.
Speaker 10: My question is whether it's time for licorice to make
Speaker 10: a really big.
Speaker 8: Comeback Others, what is the origin of this divisive delight,
Speaker 8: asked Ryan Ketchum.
Speaker 5: Okay, the divisive delight is. And by the way, if
Speaker 5: you live in West Virginia or Massachusetts or any of
Speaker 5: these cooler climates, you can grow lcorte in your yard.
Speaker 5: I do. It's a wonderful plant. And so the licorice
Speaker 5: root itself was, and in some places still is a candy.
Speaker 5: You get the licorice root and you chew it, and
Speaker 5: you get the licorice flavor. And so first came the
Speaker 5: licorice as something you could chew. But there's another reason
Speaker 5: why when you chew the licorice root it splays out
Speaker 5: in these kind of prawns. People would chew it to
Speaker 5: clean their teeth and they would always be rolling these
Speaker 5: licorice roots around in the teeth, and they choose the
Speaker 5: tree residents for the same reason. But liquorice room in
Speaker 5: particular because how it splays out so enslave. People would
Speaker 5: use that, and they would use it as unflavoring, and
Speaker 5: people would use said as a digestive, and they would
Speaker 5: use it for all these different reasons. And when candy
Speaker 5: started coming around, licorice became really important because it was
Speaker 5: available and because people like the flavor. Our palettes have
Speaker 5: changed a lot. Charlie Chaplin is one of the best
Speaker 5: examples of how popularized it became, even though not that
Speaker 5: many people knew it. He had a movie called The
Speaker 5: Gold Rush, and in it he was his hobo and
Speaker 5: he's kind of out there and he's trying to pan
Speaker 5: for gold and he didn't have any gold, so he
Speaker 5: had to eat a boot. Oh and so the same
Speaker 5: as scene where he ate a boot and he hit
Speaker 5: the shoelaces like spaghetti. This is in the twenties. And
Speaker 5: I know this because I read it research. But I
Speaker 5: also asked the guy who owns the company now his
Speaker 5: grandson of the guy who founded it, Oh, the great grandson.
Speaker 5: He confirmed that. Charlie Chaplin called the American Liquorice Company
Speaker 5: and said, can you make me a licorice boot for
Speaker 5: my movie? They said yeah, sure, So they figured it out.
Speaker 5: They made him two boots because they knew I would
Speaker 5: probably get kind of rattled up. And that's what he's
Speaker 5: eating in the movie is the America Licorice Company. But
Speaker 5: licorice was a real favorite for years and years. They
Speaker 5: had all sorts of look good in plenty. It is
Speaker 5: the first candy brand in the country. Good in Plenty
Speaker 5: eighteen ninety three, people love, you know, they're eating Good
Speaker 5: in Plenty in eighteen ninety three today, I believe again
Speaker 5: it's like Corehound. Our palettes have changed so much. So
Speaker 5: some people with a particular taste profile as they call them,
Speaker 5: they like licorice, and now other people don't. Not as
Speaker 5: many people, I can assure you like licorice as they
Speaker 5: used to. But again that has a lot to do
Speaker 5: with our limited palettes, and not an insulting way, but
Speaker 5: just reality. But yeah, licoras was everywhere. It was great,
Speaker 5: It was important. It was medicine, it was a food,
Speaker 5: it was a candy, it was a tobacco so it
Speaker 5: was a sweet treat for kids.
Speaker 8: Wow, it was Licorica's world. We were just living in
Speaker 8: it back then. I guess.
Speaker 5: Well, you know what happened. It didn't very quick. It
Speaker 5: didn't grow here, It grew all over Europe. And after
Speaker 5: the Civil War, these people were who had you know,
Speaker 5: tobacco field or had had sugar plantations, needed an economy
Speaker 5: and they wanted to create an American licorice economy because
Speaker 5: they wanted to use it in tobacco. And they said
Speaker 5: we could grow it here, we don't have to import it.
Speaker 5: We could sell it, we could export it, we could
Speaker 5: use it in the tobacco. All the money would stay here.
Speaker 5: That's the south, right, that's in the south. They're saying that.
Speaker 5: And who are they trying to get help from, Well,
Speaker 5: the north, you know, the victors of the Civil War.
Speaker 5: They're not going to give them money to start off
Speaker 5: their economy again. So they didn't, and we never have
Speaker 5: had a licoric economy. And all the licorice that we
Speaker 5: get is from somewhere else.
Speaker 8: Side note pound in licorice. Root that makes it sweet
Speaker 8: is glycoorizin. And when it comes to salmiaki or salty licorice,
Speaker 8: which is beloved in Scandinavia and Western Europe, the thing
Speaker 8: that makes it, some would say nauseatingly salty, is ammonium chloride,
Speaker 8: and some people like it so salty, this licorice that
Speaker 8: Germany had to start putting warnings that it was for
Speaker 8: adult consumption only. Now can you die from licorice? Well,
Speaker 8: that glycrizin can alter potassium levels and lead to issues
Speaker 8: with blood pressure and potentially congestive heart failure if you
Speaker 8: eat too much. And some of This salty licorice is
Speaker 8: shaped like skulls, just in case you weren't afraid enough
Speaker 8: of it. But haters, you can stay salty. Well, you know,
Speaker 8: speaking of kind of regional stuff, I always wondered why,
Speaker 8: you know, you go on a beach vacation and there's
Speaker 8: so many little shacks on peers that sell salt water taffy,
Speaker 8: and I'm like, they can be getting this salt water
Speaker 8: from below the pier so lived Tamburini and Calcy both
Speaker 8: wanted to know what's in salt water taffy? And why
Speaker 8: is it called salt water taffy? All right, sit down, okay,
Speaker 8: I'm in it.
Speaker 5: All right, you're sitting down because I'm going to tell
Speaker 5: you this, and you may not like it, but there
Speaker 5: isn't salt in saltwater taffy. And you if you've got
Speaker 5: to Denver and you get taffy, and you go to
Speaker 5: Atlantic City and you get taffy, at least if it's
Speaker 5: original old style, no salt in it, there's no different.
Speaker 5: But I'm telling you marketing, marketing, right, So marketing is
Speaker 5: what made the candy of today. This is what happened.
Speaker 5: They were making taffy on the boardwalk in Atlantic City,
Speaker 5: and the boardwalk is directly right on the ocean and
Speaker 5: the waves are coming up, and one day there was
Speaker 5: a storm. This is the story. There was a storm
Speaker 5: and the waves and the storm flooded this candy company
Speaker 5: that was making taffy on the boardwalk. So it's a
Speaker 5: mess and the guys in there and the taffy's floating
Speaker 5: on the water, and the little girl comes in and says,
Speaker 5: do you have any taffy in one of us? Taffy said,
Speaker 5: all I have the saltwater taffy. And one way or
Speaker 5: another that there are all of these stories, like he
Speaker 5: got the idea of a woman walked by and said,
Speaker 5: you ought a name of that? Nobody really knows that.
Speaker 5: That's why they call the saltwater taffy because it was
Speaker 5: made by the beach and it kept getting drenched in
Speaker 5: salt water. Well, saltwater taffy. This guy wanted to own
Speaker 5: the name saltwater taffy, and he got the rights to
Speaker 5: be the only one who could use that as his brand,
Speaker 5: and more and more people took him on legally, and
Speaker 5: then I think this was in the eighteen late eighteen eighties,
Speaker 5: and then around the nineteen twenties, saltwater taboo became a
Speaker 5: use of a word that anybody could have. He lost
Speaker 5: the rights. He was probably dead then anyway, but his
Speaker 5: descendants lost the right.
Speaker 8: His name was John ross Edmiston, and yes he is dead.
Speaker 8: His New York Times obituary from nineteen thirty nine that
Speaker 8: he lived until the age of eighty six, although he
Speaker 8: died suddenly of a heart attack right in his boardwalk store.
Speaker 8: But he literally died doing what he loved, selling saltwater taffy,
Speaker 8: which did not have salt water in it.
Speaker 5: So no, sorry, kids, no salt water in your saltwater
Speaker 5: taffy unless they're adding it now because they don't want
Speaker 5: people to get him set right well, because they think it'll.
Speaker 6: Be cool false advertising, but it isn't.
Speaker 5: The real saltwater entirety never had salt. Does it taste
Speaker 5: salted to you?
Speaker 8: No, it's not like it's fish flavored or anything, I
Speaker 8: thank god.
Speaker 5: But what they did was they created little boxes with
Speaker 5: taffy on it, and so you could go and buy
Speaker 5: some saltwater taffy from the beach to give his gifts
Speaker 5: when you go home. Of course, so it had its
Speaker 5: own little marketing ecosystem around it.
Speaker 8: Well, in terms of things that have you can't get anymore.
Speaker 8: Greg Dobbs asked a great question. It sounds informed. Ferrera
Speaker 8: Candy Company has also started making oh see, I already
Speaker 8: know have has recently stopped making atomic fireballs, jowbusters, and lemonheads.
Speaker 8: What drives the company to discontinue products? I already missed
Speaker 8: the fireballs and jawbreakers. They say, all right, so number one,
Speaker 8: don't worry. The fireballs are back.
Speaker 5: Yay. We just started carrying them again. We saw somebody
Speaker 5: else's carrying and we're like, we got to get those.
Speaker 5: So they're back and they are. Originally they were the
Speaker 5: sugar plumps of the fourteen hundreds, and they made their
Speaker 5: way up to the jawbreakers and then the atomic fireballs
Speaker 5: after World War Two. That's what they were. They were
Speaker 5: very important, but they weren't a moneymaker.
Speaker 8: Susan says that this happens with candy companies. A lot
Speaker 8: things die this much lamented death, but then are resurrected
Speaker 8: to a lot of fanfare and relief.
Speaker 5: The neck a wafer the company folded for one horrifying year.
Speaker 5: We had no neck a wafers. Now they're back. It
Speaker 5: may have been three years, but it felt like twenty years.
Speaker 5: Sad that liquorice flavored candy that some older people remember
Speaker 5: it was everywhere, Nope, gone, Who knows if it'll come back.
Speaker 5: So it's just the up and down of the economic
Speaker 5: cycle of candy, and more and more candies are dropping
Speaker 5: off of the radar at this point. Yes, you can
Speaker 5: get atomic fireballs.
Speaker 8: Susan has a candy company, of course, and her website,
Speaker 8: True Treats dot com is a feast of info. Every
Speaker 8: candy theyll comes with a biography of its origin. Even
Speaker 8: if you don't like candy, you can get a load
Speaker 8: of trivia on every page. So yes, not only does
Speaker 8: she write and research, but she is a candy merchant
Speaker 8: and so she knows the ins and outs of the biz.
Speaker 5: We can get job breakers, but only the really really
Speaker 5: big one, the mega big ones, well the medium and
Speaker 5: then the really big ones who do have jawbreakers. Again, lemonheads,
Speaker 5: I don't know about, but my hunches they were pushed
Speaker 5: out by all of their sales, probably limited by all
Speaker 5: the new unbelievably our candies that are out there. Is
Speaker 5: what I bet they may come back. I don't know.
Speaker 5: So don't give up, all you people. When you see
Speaker 5: your favorite candies leaving, don't worry. They may come back.
Speaker 5: I've witnessed it, I promise you.
Speaker 6: Does it help to tell the company that you're just
Speaker 6: so pissed not to have fireballs? Does that help?
Speaker 5: Yeah? Okay, it does? Yeah, protest All right, I'm going
Speaker 5: to tell your protests at work. You're ready, uh huh okay.
Speaker 5: You know the pixie stick, yes, of course, a little straw,
Speaker 5: that wonderful little straw that by the way, it was gone.
Speaker 5: It was gone last year. No more pixie sticks were
Speaker 5: there were some of these, like newer versions. Right now
Speaker 5: it's back. Yeah, Pixi sticks again.
Speaker 8: Patron Eso Party confess that they used to love super
Speaker 8: sugary candy as a kid, like pixie sticks. But they
Speaker 8: write at twenty six now the thought of that candy
Speaker 8: makes me gag, And yes, I get it, you so
Speaker 8: my teeth sweat just imagining them. But the history is
Speaker 8: fascinating anyway.
Speaker 5: Pixiesick were made in the earlier part of the nineteen hundreds.
Speaker 5: Kids were eating them, and they were gone to school
Speaker 5: and they were eating a pixie stick, and they had
Speaker 5: the white shirts on because in those days, kids dressed
Speaker 5: up for school and they had white shirts and they
Speaker 5: would eat pixie sticks like you did. They would go
Speaker 5: to the pharmacy and they would get them and they
Speaker 5: were covered with colors. And the mothers were very, very upset.
Speaker 5: So they did what you're recommending now, my dear. What
Speaker 5: they did is they lobbied the company to make a
Speaker 5: meaed a version of the pixie stick. Our kids love it.
Speaker 5: We have to give our kids these candies. But you
Speaker 5: can't do this. There's slabs and we can't have a
Speaker 5: kid be a slav in school. So the company obliged.
Speaker 5: They listened, and you know what they made as a
Speaker 5: needer version of the pixie stick. You know what they
Speaker 5: called it, Tommy Tommy sweet tarts.
Speaker 6: There we go.
Speaker 8: Those are yeah, those who can keep in your purse too,
Speaker 8: and you can just one at a time, you know.
Speaker 5: Well, yeah, kids can eat them and not get it
Speaker 5: all over themselves. So people, you can lobby your company.
Speaker 5: You can lobby the company, but you got to have
Speaker 5: a lot of cloud, got to really get numbers. Numbers.
Speaker 8: Well, some people who had best intentions have wondered about
Speaker 8: sugar substitute candies. Maybe blood sugar is an issue, maybe
Speaker 8: dietary reasons, and Turner Piers wanted to know how is
Speaker 8: sugar free candy made and why does it never quite
Speaker 8: taste right? And then other people asked about Brian Shenanigans
Speaker 8: wants to know what is it about sugar substitutes and
Speaker 8: sugar free candy Like sorbitol and melotol, they give you
Speaker 8: the epic poops.
Speaker 6: Other people wanted to know the epic poops. So people
Speaker 6: asked about real digestive issues with sugar free candies.
Speaker 5: If you have stivia, I mean you can grow stivvy
Speaker 5: in your garden, rip it up, put it on your
Speaker 5: food sale. It's delicious and sweet. The story is that
Speaker 5: these artificial sugars are so infused with flavor of sweetness
Speaker 5: that doesn't exist in nature. As I said, go eat
Speaker 5: a sugar cube, it doesn't have that much flavor, So
Speaker 5: we go for the artificial sugar sweich are really really sweet.
Speaker 5: So now our thresholds for sweetness keeps changing from these things.
Speaker 8: Okay, so the quick skinny on sweeteners. There are natural
Speaker 8: and engineered sweeteners, but what you might be seeing on
Speaker 8: the nutrition labels of sugar free or keto friendly candy
Speaker 8: are sugar alcohols. Usually they have talls at the end
Speaker 8: of their names, like xylotol or erythritol or manitol sorbitol,
Speaker 8: and they range from being as sweet as sugar to
Speaker 8: about half as sweet. Now, these things occur naturally in
Speaker 8: some fruits hello prunes, little foreshadowing, but as a processed
Speaker 8: food ingredient, they are typically manufactured from things like potato starch. Now,
Speaker 8: the beauty of them is that they can provide body
Speaker 8: and sweetness to candy without the calorie content of actual sugars,
Speaker 8: partly because your body cannot digest them well, so they
Speaker 8: get a fast track ticket to your intestines, where your
Speaker 8: gut biome is stoked to have them. Your gut biome
Speaker 8: is like, what is all this? It digests up a
Speaker 8: storm and it celebrates with plumes of farts. Sorbatol is
Speaker 8: sold straight up as a medical laxative and ps for
Speaker 8: more on powerwashing your intestines precolonoscopy, I have a whole
Speaker 8: field trip ride along episode on that linked in the
Speaker 8: show notes without shame, but apart from bubblegut and the
Speaker 8: cancelation of any plans you had for a few days,
Speaker 8: sugar alcohols can wreak more bodily havoc. In a recent
Speaker 8: Cleveland Clinic article ominously titled what You Should Know about
Speaker 8: Sugar Alcohols, physicians warn that sugar alcohols like xylotol and
Speaker 8: uythrotol can also cause over activity of your platelets, resulting
Speaker 8: in blood cloths and other cardiovascular debt. So, as one
Speaker 8: Amazon review proclaimed, see you in Hell, sugar free got
Speaker 8: me bears.
Speaker 5: So you're not reacting well to it because it's not
Speaker 5: good for you, probably to whatever extent.
Speaker 8: Well for people who are looking for maybe some moderation
Speaker 8: or looking for certain candies that might be healthier for them.
Speaker 8: A ton of people's storm, Dylan V. Gerrick McLoughlin, Eveilye
Speaker 8: Sanchez wanted to know, are there any candies that it
Speaker 8: still tastes good? But, in Andrea's words, is their hope
Speaker 8: for lower sugar candy that still tastes good for people
Speaker 8: such as myself who have to watch their sugar intake.
Speaker 8: Any advice you have for people who are on healthcake.
Speaker 5: It's a very hard question to answer because I know
Speaker 5: that if you have diabetes and you eat raisins, it's
Speaker 5: sugar and you can't eat that many raisins, so it's
Speaker 5: really hard questions. So I'll take the medical aspect out
Speaker 5: of it because it isn't kind of what I would
Speaker 5: do where I'd get sued if I did. Because I'm
Speaker 5: not a doctor, I can't say that again.
Speaker 8: Please see our two part episode with a diabetic diapetologist,
Speaker 8: doctor Macnatter about diabetes.
Speaker 6: Better yet, see your doctor.
Speaker 5: But much of what you have has tons of sugar
Speaker 5: in it that shouldn't. If you go to a restaurant
Speaker 5: or even your home and you eat a sauce, you're
Speaker 5: eating a syrup. If you go to have a sandwich,
Speaker 5: you've got all the sugar in your sandwich places where
Speaker 5: it doesn't belong. When you're eating candy, you know how
Speaker 5: much you're eating.
Speaker 8: Here is her advice, and it's good advice.
Speaker 5: What you do is you get enough candy because there's
Speaker 5: an event, because it's the end of the week, and
Speaker 5: you get a candy that you really like, and you
Speaker 5: just eat it and just know as you're eating it,
Speaker 5: I'm not going to have it tomorrow.
Speaker 6: I'd like it.
Speaker 5: I ate it. It's good. What happened to you mark
Speaker 5: my words, because this is what happened to me. I
Speaker 5: went into candy as a researcher, not necessarily a candy lover,
Speaker 5: but it really was for me feel good. I know
Speaker 5: people feel good when they eat candy and when you
Speaker 5: share it with somebody who feel good and all that.
Speaker 5: Now that I don't eat much sugar and many sweet
Speaker 5: things because I really don't. My tolerance for sweet things
Speaker 5: is very low. I don't like sweet things.
Speaker 6: So breaking news.
Speaker 8: A candy historian, an expert who has written ten books
Speaker 8: and owns a candy shop does not overdo it on candy.
Speaker 5: When I have a circus peanut, I can eat half
Speaker 5: and I feel it all day. But I like it.
Speaker 5: I just can't. So what I'm saying is use candy
Speaker 5: the way it should be used, which is ceremonial. Get
Speaker 5: the can you really love, share it with somebody. There's
Speaker 5: nothing wrong but that once you start looking for candy
Speaker 5: that's healthy for you, you're gonna follow the traps of
Speaker 5: getting an energy bar and a health food bar. Yeah,
Speaker 5: that you're eating something healthy and you're still in in candy.
Speaker 6: I have to say.
Speaker 8: I used to work for food networking for the Cooking Channel.
Speaker 8: I was on a dessert show for seven years and
Speaker 8: seven seasons, and I never ate so healthy because of
Speaker 8: that show. I would go and sample six donuts in
Speaker 8: a sitting, seventeen pieces of high over the day, and
Speaker 8: then the rest of the week I was like, salads
Speaker 8: and protein please. Like I could pass by a bakery
Speaker 8: case and be like, I'm good. But as soon as
Speaker 8: you're like, you have it, your brain starts saying, no,
Speaker 8: I have to have it.
Speaker 6: I have to have it, you know what I mean.
Speaker 5: So it's okay, we want sugar, but we should be
Speaker 5: using it in a way that works for us and
Speaker 5: not against us. Very light, just teeny tiny amount practically, no,
Speaker 5: and don't believe what marketers telling you the full of beans.
Speaker 6: Check your energy folks.
Speaker 8: Well, you know, before I get to our last two
Speaker 8: questions that I ask every guest, what do you give
Speaker 8: out at Halloween?
Speaker 6: Halloween's coming up? What do you get trig or treaters
Speaker 6: in West Virginia and on your block?
Speaker 5: People who do yeah, yeah, we're part of the United States.
Speaker 8: Well, I mean, I'm just saying some Maybe you live
Speaker 8: on a rural road. My poor parents would get a
Speaker 8: bucket of Halloween candy and they lived in the mountains.
Speaker 8: Never got anyone. I live on a cul de sac.
Speaker 8: I have never seen a child your fre case.
Speaker 6: So we'll get candy, and I'm like crickets. So I
Speaker 6: go to my friend's houses to help them hand out candy.
Speaker 8: But when you have to pick out what candy you
Speaker 8: give out, Yeah, I imagine these people have no idea
Speaker 8: that they're talking to one of the world's experts in candy.
Speaker 5: I don't do it. You don't what.
Speaker 1: I don't?
Speaker 6: I can?
Speaker 5: I mean, I worried that nobody would show up at
Speaker 5: my house all this candy. So what I have done
Speaker 5: sometimes is this very busy street with with a big
Speaker 5: halloween some kids. Sometimes I go and I join people
Speaker 5: there to get out of it. So what I do
Speaker 5: is I shut off my lights and I go off together.
Speaker 5: What it's true? Or I gonna meet my friends healthier.
Speaker 5: But they have so much damn candy. Then it want more? Stup? Oh,
Speaker 5: we don't need it. We're home early because he's shut
Speaker 5: down time for Halloween. We're home early. We go to
Speaker 5: the back of the house and shut off all the
Speaker 5: lights in the front.
Speaker 6: I have pictured you with just a trop of pink,
Speaker 6: only starbirds, which is the best way for I'm like
Speaker 6: I'm like Pumpkin reces no. If you no.
Speaker 5: Idea I got from Candy, couldn't, They'll get pissed off.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I know.
Speaker 8: Can you imagine they're like never going there again. Well
Speaker 8: then I guess, don't ask Susan, don't trick or treat
Speaker 8: Susan's house.
Speaker 6: You take a trick. Oh my god.
Speaker 8: Well, the worst thing last two questions, worst thing about
Speaker 8: what you do, worst thing about candy, worst thing about
Speaker 8: researching it. There's got to be something that sucks about
Speaker 8: your job.
Speaker 5: There is nothing that sucks about it in terms of
Speaker 5: what I do in telling people the stories, because they
Speaker 5: love them, because it's about their lives, it's about their generations,
Speaker 5: it's about happiness. It's like I'm giving them love. It
Speaker 5: really matters. And when I go on my store, which
Speaker 5: is Candy's from the very beginning of history, all the
Speaker 5: way through the nineteen hundreds of the story on them
Speaker 5: on the labels, they're really happy. And I can go
Speaker 5: there and people are really happy, and it's so important
Speaker 5: to me that we value happiness and we are happy
Speaker 5: and that we're together. And then you want to talk
Speaker 5: about how love sucks, it starts with happiness and it's care.
Speaker 5: So I love that. The only thing I will say,
Speaker 5: and you don't have to hear this that really sucks
Speaker 5: about at y'all, is I really love telling these stories.
Speaker 5: And I do so much media, and I often most
Speaker 5: of the time get us really stupidal and it's like
Speaker 5: you could just go to the Mars website and get there.
Speaker 5: I mean, this is serious, important, dynamic, cultural, amazing, funny things.
Speaker 5: So that and so that is why I will tell
Speaker 5: you in all honesty I do. I do a lot
Speaker 5: of me. Yeah, I will be on anything you do
Speaker 5: at anytime.
Speaker 6: You are great.
Speaker 5: I dread interviews sometimes, but you know, sometimes there are
Speaker 5: people now I just won't. I'm I'm busy, sorry, but
Speaker 5: but I what I love to do is tell these
Speaker 5: stories and share things. Mad to people. Having you interview
Speaker 5: me in all honesty and me just me and you,
Speaker 5: it's so madters to me because I can tell them
Speaker 5: the interesting things and you don't know about and they
Speaker 5: don't know about it, and I do know about and
Speaker 5: an't the stories that are out there. What bitter gift
Speaker 5: is there in your life and it makes people happy
Speaker 5: and it makes sense and it honors the enslaved people
Speaker 5: and it honors the immigrants, and it honors everybody.
Speaker 6: Oh, getting your honor schedule was a really big deal
Speaker 6: for us.
Speaker 5: Well, it's some big deals for me too.
Speaker 6: I would say, have a happy Halloween, but have a
Speaker 6: quiet Halloween.
Speaker 5: I'll have a delicious Halloween. I'm going to a good restaurant.
Speaker 8: So ask sweet people serious questions about the things that
Speaker 8: are right under your nose or in your purse or
Speaker 8: in your mouth. Because the candy isle, it's never been
Speaker 8: so nuanced and historical, the gossip, the gossip in it.
Speaker 1: I love it.
Speaker 8: If you have a favorite candy that we didn't cover, honestly,
Speaker 8: just start googling it because chances are it's got a
Speaker 8: wacky backstory. So thank you to Susan Benjamin for being
Speaker 8: on and again. Her historic candy company is True Treats.
Speaker 8: It's linked in the show notes, or you can stop
Speaker 8: by the store in Harper's Ferry, Virginia. Her latest book
Speaker 8: is Fun Foods of America, Outrageous to lights, celebrated brands
Speaker 8: and iconic recipes, linked in the show notes.
Speaker 6: All her books are great.
Speaker 8: A donation went to the Animal Welfare Society of Jefferson County,
Speaker 8: also linked in the show notes and hello to all
Speaker 8: the little babies there. Let me know if someone gets
Speaker 8: gravy train or another animal that is waiting for you
Speaker 8: to love it. We are at Ologies on Twitter and
Speaker 8: x and I'm at ali Ward on both Smologies is
Speaker 8: our spinoff show that is all ages and classroom friendly.
Speaker 8: You can find it with a new green logo wherever
Speaker 8: you get podcasts. That was made by Portland artist Bonnie
Speaker 8: Dunch who designed that, and Aaron Talbert admins Theologies podcast
Speaker 8: Facebook group. Thank you to scheduling producer and sugar Plum
Speaker 8: Fairy herself, Noel Dilworth, our managing director who also helped
Speaker 8: a ton with research. Is the wonderful Susan Hale.
Speaker 6: Kelly R.
Speaker 8: Dwyer does the website and can do yours. Aveline Malick
Speaker 8: makes our professional transcripts. Jake Chafee is an editor who
Speaker 8: just sweetens our mix and our every days. And lead
Speaker 8: editor who confects the episodes together is Mercedes Maitland of
Speaker 8: Maitland Audio. Nick Thorburn wrote the music And if you
Speaker 8: stick around to the end, I tell you a secret.
Speaker 8: And So I've been sick on the couch for many days,
Speaker 8: like four or five days working on this, and in
Speaker 8: the background to keep me company, I've had season ten
Speaker 8: of The Survivalist Show alone on Netflix in the background,
Speaker 8: and right as I was researching clips of Charlie Chaplin
Speaker 8: eating the boot cad on a loan. He's a twenty
Speaker 8: seven year old survivalist from Wyoming, is starving as you
Speaker 8: do in the winter in Saskatchewan with no food, so
Speaker 8: Caid decides he's going to boil a chunk of his
Speaker 8: leather belt to eat. I feel like at that time
Speaker 8: Caid would have killed for an actual grish boot. Well,
Speaker 8: he would have killed any animal just to eat the animal.
Speaker 8: But yeah, what kismet? Watching Charlie Chaplin eat a shoe
Speaker 8: at the exact same moment another guy has tried to
Speaker 8: chew his belt. I'm just gonna stick to soup and
Speaker 8: a lot of recollas that's my next meal, Okay for
Speaker 8: by Hacadermatology, Homeology, r doo, zoology, lithology, new zeroonology, meteorology, partology, apology, seiology, selology.
Speaker 2: We are the music makers and we are the dreamers
Speaker 2: of dreams.
Speaker 1: Virgin Media broadband is smooth. How smooth you ask? Well,
Speaker 1: imagine you're a big old War Rush soup.
Speaker 2: And rather than lumbering around a glacier avoiding polar bears,
Speaker 2: you're on a lake, driving the speedboat three thousand kilos
Speaker 2: of mollusking magnificence, feeling the wind in your whiskers and
Speaker 2: the sun on your big blubbery face. That's the kind
Speaker 2: of smoothness you feel. With ninety nine point nine percent
Speaker 2: broadband reliability available nationwide Virgin Media, It's playtime subject to availability.
Speaker 3: TDNC supply for broadband reliability to Virgin Media dot i
Speaker 3: E Forward slash proof.
Speaker 8: The atoma got bugger onlu the haartanir, the holla, the
Speaker 8: hayman a heckl ah erswin it where auras lonce ledani
Speaker 8: the tain nudov shood will kill nagatarhu la Hula's humperodes
Speaker 8: on uderas ors lance is phaserlatgun's throw, Tasha tapa siranashka
Speaker 8: agus nyavri and rafad is fugu more telrik h I.
Speaker 8: A punk ie is called vilala a on tudoros ourgras lonce.
Speaker 6: If we walt this na heron