Interesting facts about candies

They are delicious, fragrant and sweet. We are all used to the fact that there is a choice of various sweets, ranging from lollipops to chocolate bars, on the shelves of stores. But candy as we know it today only began to appear in the 19th century.

And today we decided to take a closer look at these amazing confectionery products. In the article we have prepared the most interesting facts about sweets and candies.

• 1. In the UK and Ireland the famous Snickers bars were called Marathon until 1990. The first Snickers bar was invented in 1923 by American confectioner Franklin Mars, who founded the Mar-O-Bar Company in 1911 (he renamed it Mars Candies in 1926 and later it became known as Mars Incorporated).

  Mass production of Snickers began in 1930 and for 60 years in the UK and Ireland, bars were produced under the name Marathon. Only in 1990 it was decided to start producing bars under the name by which the whole world knows it – Snickers, in these countries.

• 2. In 1897, dentist William Morrison and confectioner John Wharton created a machine that turned sugar into superfine threads. With these superfine threads assembled, William and John began to create a new product called cotton candy. In 1904, it was presented at the World's Fair in St. Louis, Missouri, USA. In addition to cotton candy, such food products as waffle cone, iced tea, peanut butter, hamburger, etc. were presented and popularized at this fair.

• 3. We all (or not all) love chocolate. But did you know that, technically speaking, white chocolate is not chocolate. Standard chocolate consists of grated cocoa, cocoa butter and powdered sugar (milk is also added to milk chocolate). By changing the proportions of these ingredients, you can change the taste of the finished product. In white chocolate, there is no trace of cocoa (except for cocoa butter, obtained by squeezing from grated cocoa).

• 4. MMs are famous all over the world. But what does this acronym mean? In fact, Mamp;M are the first letters of the names of the creators of these sweets.

  In 1941, Forrest Mars, Sr., son of Franklin Mars, who founded Mars Incorporated, and Bruce Murrie, son of William Murrie, president of Hershey, founded Mars amp; Murrie (Mamp;M for short) and began to produce new candies that subsequently conquered the whole world.

• 5. The earliest sweet that people if from prehistoric times was honey. The origins of confectionery can be traced back to around 2000 BC. Then the ancient Egyptians made sweets by mixing fruits and nuts with honey. The Romans, Greeks and Chinese made sweets based on sesame seeds, nuts, etc. The Aztecs in Mexico used cocoa beans to make a bitter drink called "cacahuatl". Sugar was added to this drink only 1500 years after its creation.

• 6. Chocolate itself is expensive. But there are sweets, in comparison with which even the most expensive chocolate bar or a candy bar in your supermarket will seem almost a free treat. Such expensive sweets include:

  • Trinity sweets. They are produced in India and the cost of 1 kg is more than 6,000 dollars. These sweets are considered the most expensive in the world and are listed in the Guinness Book of Records.

  • Wispa Gold bar. This, at first glance, inconspicuous bar costs about $ 1,600. It costs so much because of its packaging, made of gold leaf.

  • A set of Swarovski-Studded Chocolates. This set includes 49 chocolates and their cost is over $10,000. Such a high cost of the set is due to the unique packaging, decorated with precious Swarovski crystals and silk roses.

  And this is not all expensive sweets that can be found on the market today.

• 7. Chocolate can be deadly to dogs and cats. The thing is that chocolate contains theobromine (an alkaloid of the purine series, which is a colorless crystal of bitter taste, insoluble in water). A small dose of chocolate can cause vomiting and diarrhea in animals. If they consume a large amount of chocolate (about 2-3 bars of 100 gram milk chocolate), a lethal outcome is possible.

  It is also worth noting that theobromine is dangerous for humans. However, theobromine is metabolized much faster in humans than in animals. The lethal dose for humans is 1000 mg per kilogram of body weight. One bar of milk chocolate contains about 150–220 mg of theobromine. That is, for a person weighing 60 kg, it would be deadly to consume about 300 milk chocolates at a time.

• 8. The melting point of cocoa butter is slightly lower than our body temperature, so chocolate melts as soon as it enters the mouth (by the way, white chocolate melts faster than ordinary chocolate).

• 9. Candy is a great treat, but overconsumption of sweets can harm your teeth. Bacteria living in our mouth feed on sugar and then release acid.

  Initially, the acid is neutralized by saliva, but after plaque forms on the teeth (this is a soft, sticky biofilm that consists of bacteria, their waste products, saliva, food debris and tissue detritus (destroyed cells)) and it becomes hard, saliva cannot get under it, and the acid begins to destroy tooth enamel. Therefore, the more and longer sugar is in the mouth, the more bacteria eat and the more acid they produce. That is why sweets in large quantities are dangerous for our teeth.

• 10. People with certain genes are more likely to have a sweet tooth. Scientists from the University of Copenhagen found that people with hepatokine (FGF21) gene variants rs838133 and rs838145 are genetically more prone to eating sweets and eating candies, chocolate, donuts, etc. 20% more often than other people.