Healthy candy is an oxymoron to me. It’s not that healthy food tastes bad, but rather that there’s little in candy that can be deemed nutritious. But after dark chocolate was discovered to contain some of the highest concentration of antioxidants, candy began to be repackaged with a healthier spin.
These days, it’s not unusual to see a bag of gummies touting they’re filled with “antioxidants;” that’s a brilliant marketing ploy that really means there’s vitamin C, most likely in the form of ascorbic acid, in there. And though something that has vitamin C in it seems healthy, you ingest more than enough in your everyday diet, as evidenced by the few cases of scurvy we hear about.
At the All Candy Expo, it was impossible to saunter by a booth trying to sell snake oil with claims of why their product was so healthy. It has pomegranate! Made with real fruit juice! No artificial flavors! Only 100 calories! I like candy, but I’m very skeptical about eating it when I’m being fooled into eating it for the wrong reasons.
There was one seemingly odd exception to this rule. When I approached the BrightSpot booth, a small candy company based in Chicago, they began trying to extol the virtues of their candy. I seemed pretty blase about their speech until I heard words like “probiotics.†I was definitely intrigued and curious when I was given a bag of each of their Gimmie Chocolate Candies.
