When I eat candy, I want it to taste real.
Yes, I’m fully aware this might sound like an oxymoron: “real” and “candy” don’t tend to mesh with one another. But when you’re comparing fruity candy with chocolate candy, chocolate takes the award for being more authentic.
And no, this doesn’t mean I’m advocating chocolate as being good for me. In fact, a full-size Hershey’s chocolate bar has 43 grams of sugar in it.
At least when I reach for a chocolate bar, though, I’m not eating some “fruity” thing full of high-fructose corn syrup, artificial flavors, colored dyes, and chemicals.
The Sour Patch Kids ingredient list, for example, contains sugar, corn syrup, modified corn starch, tartaric acid, citric acid, natural and artificial flavoring, yellow 6, red 40, yellow 5, and blue 1. Why would I want all these things in my body?
It’s not for the sake of taste, because the flavor simply can’t compare to that of chocolate. There is nothing that compares to the earthy flavor and the melt-in-your-mouth quality chocolate has.
No, I don’t discriminate with my chocolate preferences. When I was a kid it started with Hershey’s Kisses, Milky Way, Three Musketeers, and the occasional Snickers; now, my tastes have become a bit more refined: Almond Joy, Mounds, or even just plain dark chocolate.
This Halloween, I know I’ll be trick-or-treating for chocolate. Nothing else.
Reach Opinion Editor Rebecca Gross at arts@dailyuw.com. Twitter: @becsgross
