Sally Breslin: My Life: SOME RANDOM FACTS ABOUT CANDY...

I was thinking about penny candy the other day, mainly because I think about candy a lot, and decided to check out some online candy sellers that advertise it.

What I discovered was penny candy should change its name to quarter candy because it’s false advertising to associate anything about it with a penny now – unless maybe you’re talking about a couple of those teeny white balls on the tops of nonpareils.

When I think back to when I was a kid and a dollar bought 100 pieces of penny candy or 20 full-sized candy bars, and how today, a dollar buys only four pieces of penny candy and maybe half a candy bar, well, it’s enough to make me swear off sweets for life.

Almost.

The truth is, I’ve been addicted to candy ever since I was a toddler and found my grandmother’s secret stash of a 10-lb. box of Whitman’s chocolates hidden underneath her sofa. I ended up with most of the chocolate on my face and hands, but I did manage to get enough into my mouth to create a lifelong craving for more...so much more.

Which, according to my recent online search, should have caused my premature demise ages ago.

For example, I’ve always loved Tootsie Rolls, even though many people have described them as tasting like weak chocolate milk and being chewy when soft, but capable of yanking out fillings when they get hard. What I never knew, however, was a Tootsie Roll contains one gram of trans fat. That doesn’t sound like much, but according to the American Heart Association, only one percent of a person's total daily calorie-intake should be from trans fats. For a person who consumes 2,000 calories a day, that translates to just two grams.

Believe me, I was not the sort of kid who ate only ONE Tootsie Roll at a time. That wasn’t even an appetizer for me. So all of my arteries probably were clogged up by the time I was 10.

I also just read a shocking article released by PETA in which they are asking people to send the following request to candy companies:

“I've learned that your company uses insect secretions to glaze candy, even though you can still make your product without it. Not only is this unappetizing, it's also cruel. Some 100,000 lac bugs must die to produce about one pound of shellac flakes. Please, make your candies cruelty-free by replacing this shellac with a vegan alternative so that I can once again enjoy them. Thank you.”

I’d never heard of “lac bugs,” so I researched them. There are many types, but most commonly they are a type of beetle that sucks the sap from trees and excretes "sticklac" (a resin) almost constantly...which then is used in making shellac, as well as the glaze on some types of popular candies. One brand of candy they mentioned just happened to be one I've enjoyed eating at least once a week for over 50 years. I even have a brand new box of it sitting in my cupboard at this very moment.

So I figure I’ve probably consumed more bug parts than an anteater at this point in my life.

Another fact I found interesting was which candies currently are considered the top two favorites in the USA…and which two would guarantee your house to be bombarded with eggs if you dared to hand them out to trick-or-treaters. The two most popular, according to the majority of the polls, are Reese’s peanut butter cups and Snickers bars, in no particular order. The two least favorites are candy corn and circus peanuts.

I’ve never understood why those banana-flavored, bright orange candies were called circus peanuts in the first place, other than they are shaped like peanuts still in the shell. And candy corn has no flavor at all, even though the three different layers of color on each one deceptively lead you to believe it has three different flavors, like orange, lemon and vanilla...when it actually tastes like plain sugar mixed with candle wax.

Ironically, both of them were my late husband’s favorites.

But I can’t criticize him for being in the minority and liking the least popular candies in this country…because one of my own favorites came in third on the “prefer to let the dog bury” list.

I’m talking about Atomic fireballs.

As a kid, there was nothing I enjoyed more than burning out my tonsils or cracking a molar while sucking on and then crunching (when I got bored because the flavor had disappeared) a fireball jawbreaker. The Atomic ones were especially good because they were capable of making even your eyeballs sweat.

And let’s not forget the excessive amounts of red dye used on them. When licked, a fireball could then be used like bright red lipstick…that lasted all day. I still can remember when I was in the eighth grade and bought fireballs after school every day (unbeknownst to my parents). I experienced so many bouts of heartburn, my mother finally took me to a doctor who made me drink a glass of chalk and then X-rayed my stomach. The diagnosis was an inflammation of the stomach lining.

I’ll bet it just looked inflamed due to all of the red food-coloring it had absorbed.

And now that I’ve learned all of this valuable information about candies that contain artery-clogging trans fat, bug excretions and questionable food coloring, do I regret eating so much of it? And will I, from this day forward, make an effort to avoid such offenders?

Heck no.

After all, it’s not my fault I still need my candy fixes – it’s my grandmother’s.

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Sally Breslin is a native New Englander and an award-winning syndicated humor columnist who has written regularly for newspapers and magazines all of her adult life. She is the author of several novels in a variety of genres, from humor and romance to science-fiction. Contact her at: sillysally@att.net

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