Mad About Science: Candy

By Brenden Bobby
Reader Columnist

It’s All Hallows Eve and the Reader is stuffed to bursting. Spooky stories, Halloween parties and frightful electoral outrage bring ghoulish fright to every page. Ink flows, dripping like blood down crisp white sheets. Surely, Brenden has prepared something so frightful, so terrifying that it will send chills down your spine like the frigid whisper of autumn’s bitter breeze.

Actually, we’re just going to learn about candy.

Candy, like most food, has a deep and complex history with roots that are almost impossible to trace. The history of candy likely predates the ability to write about how much we love candy, though the sugary sweets we gobble up today are a far cry from the confectionary delights enjoyed by our ancestors.

The earliest written records of what we can identify as candy come from Egypt between 1500 and 2000 B.C.E. These were little treats made of honey with nuts and bits of fruit mixed in. The Egyptians were recorded using these as part of their religious ceremonies, but they were likely enjoyed to some degree in everyday life as well.

Licorice was one of the first sugary flavors utilized to make candies by the ancient Egyptians. This is different in every respect to the licorice ropes you enjoy today. Licorice vines like Twizzlers and Red Vines were developed in Holland during the 17th century and have evolved into the tooth-rotting ropes we recognize today thanks to the advent of mechanized industry.

Interestingly, most contemporary licorice flavoring doesn’t use the licorice plant but instead uses seeds from the unrelated star anise. Even though these plants are unrelated, their flavor is closely mirrored.

Ginger was another early form of candy that has been used since antiquity. It originated in Indonesia and was bred for its palatable flavor and ease of eating — traits its wild cousins lack. It was heavily traded throughout southeast Asia for at least 1000 years, and though it made its way to Egypt and the Mediterranean, it may not have made it to Anglo-European countries until closer to the 1500s, at least not in large enough quantities to write home about.

If we are to define candy as a sugary treat, the real history of candy may have started as far back as 20,000 B.C.E. when humans would gather raw honey from beehives. Whether or not a fistful of raw honey is considered true candy is a debate for the comment section on social media, but it was worth mentioning. Humans have always had a sweet tooth.

Candy as we know it originated in Medieval European cuisine in the 14th century C.E. The Tudor period and subsequent Elizabethan colonialism brought resources from far and wide, particularly vast amounts of tropical sugar cane, which was then ground down and refined into white sugar. The process of refining sugar has scaled up since the days of Queen Elizabeth, but the steps are likely similar.

Sugar begins as a starch that exists within sugar cane. The cane is crushed and pressed between rollers to extract the juice that contains sugar. This juice is filtered to remove extra plant fiber and then evaporated to remove the water from the starch. This product is filtered again and boiled to create something akin to molasses. During Elizabethan times, it was probably smashed up by hand to create chunks of sugar crystal, but it is now whipped around a centrifuge to create granules.

Today, sugarcane and sugar beets are the world’s primary sources of refined sugar. Sugarcane has a dark history of hard labor attached to it, one that began with slavery and now utilizes a vast quantity of immigrant labor being employed below federal minimum wages. Harvesting sugarcane is difficult and dangerous work and is a process that isn’t easily mechanized.

Once sugar becomes refined and granulated, it can be processed into any shape or added to any other type of food. It easily emulsifies to create sweet drinks like soda, and it blends into cream and milk in a number of ways to create things like buttercream frosting and caramel.

Sugar is so delightful and effective at hiding that it has become a central cause of the obesity crisis in the developed world. Sugar is even utilized in cheap staple foods like white bread. Our bodies are not developed to handle the concentrated levels of sugar we ingest and will break down the sugar’s atomic components and turn them into active energy and stored energy in the form of fats. Fat is a great way to survive harsh environments, but it becomes problematic when you exist in an air-conditioned space with no real concern for resource scarcity. Prolonged exposure to high levels of sugar causes a vast number of health problems including diabetes, damage to your organs and joints and changes to your gut’s microbiome that will make you crave more sugar and feel worse over time.

Candy and sugar, like all things in life, are best enjoyed in moderation. Instead of grabbing the biggest, cheapest bag of assembly-line garbage you can find on November 1st, spend that same amount of money on something nice, such as a bar of chocolate that isn’t heavy enough to cause blunt-force trauma when utilized as a weapon. The straining notch on your belt may thank you by Christmas.

Stay curious, 7B.