The old advice is that you grow up and you are to put away childish things. Journalist and food blogger Kate Hopkins bought into this. She was a fiend for candy when she was a kid, but as you age your view of candy is supposed to change. "No longer is it representative of the happiness that life can bring you," she writes in _Sweet Tooth: The Bittersweet History of Candy_ (St. Martin's Press). "Now it represents the unhealthy, the immature, and the gluttonous." She found that her definition was coming correct: "Adulthood is when one has the means to buy every candy in the shop but no longer has the desire to do so." Fortunately for her, and for her readers, her means of getting her midlife crisis behind her was to travel and research the history of candy. A friend is incredulous, saying, "So you're going to travel the world, claiming you're studying the history of candy, but instead you're using it as an excuse to do a yearlong Halloween?" She does get to binge on some fancy candies, and some Halloween-bag standards, and some historic sweets, and even readers who don't want to admit how much they themselves would enjoy such indulgence will enjoy the witty, wide-eyed report of this binge and the travelogue with its historic views of the sometimes unsavory candy story.
The ancient Egyptians may have combined nuts or seeds with honey, but there is no evidence of sugar making until around 500 AD. Naturally, the history of candy is closely linked to the history of sugar, and Hopkins does not skip reflections on the darkest part of this history, slavery. Not only was there a slave problem centuries ago, but we continue the problem today with that other irresistible treat, chocolate. There are horrors of child slavery especially in Ivory Coast which supplies about 40% of the world's cocoa beans. That such things might still be, just to get us our chocolate treats, is a dismal reflection on humanity. Throughout the book, Hopkins includes sidebars labeled "Kate's Candy Bag," a nod to her beloved Halloweens of childhood. Halloween plays a huge role in candy sales, and the candy makers know it, but it is a relatively modern holiday. The National Confectioners Association was formed in 1884, partly to improve candy's image; as an example of how easily some people will disapprove of what they see others enjoying, Hopkins quotes one moralist as advising how candy shops were "hot beds of disease," and candy consumption would lead to "intemperance, gluttony, and debauchery." The NCA wanted to clear candy of such charges, and incidentally, to make more money. They proposed a Candy Day, the second Saturday of October starting in 1916, for exhibiting and promoting their candy wares, but in the 1920s trick or treating with candy handouts seems to have started in the west, and moved eastwards. We have our candy day, but it is not Candy Day.
Hopkins goes first to Palermo, where there are ancient confections based on Roman and Arabian cuisines, but in which also she mistakenly enters a shop thinking it sells candy, while it turns out to be the storefront of a wedding consultant. "My first attempt at acquiring candy in a foreign land, and here I was, inadvertently attempting to plan my own nuptials." She goes to Genoa, because of the connection to Christopher Columbus, who influenced candy strongly because he helped in the propagation of sugarcane, but he also failed to influence it even more because it's likely he was the first European to come across chocolate, and he didn't do a thing about it. In Venice, she visits the city most associated with the spice trade of its time; sugar was treated like a spice, and also combined with spices to make flavored candies. In England, a land that loves its toffees and chocolates, she has Edinburgh Rock and Soor Plooms and rhubarb custards. Finally back in the USA, she makes her pilgrimage to Hershey, Pennsylvania, joyously visiting a city founded on chocolate, a visit that somehow her parents had denied her when she was little. The worldwide tour is great fun, and it is a delight to read her funny, self-deprecating reports. You can read her book, learn some important world history, and wonder at some very fancy or very plain candies. You won't risk a single cavity or gain a pound, unless (and this is a true risk) you find Hopkins's enthusiasm contagious.
