Focus 580; Candyfreak: A Journey Through the Chocolate Underbelly of America

In this part of focus 580 will be talking with a man who claims to have eaten candy every single day of his entire life. And after you read his book The newly published book titled candy freak a journey through the chocolate underbelly of America. I think you will be inclined to believe him. The book is published by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill it is in part a memoir of his own personal candy obsession but it's also about the industry the candy industry about how it is that candy bars come to be and why it is that sometimes they become extinct. And about the great battle that is waged between smaller candy makers and the big three Mars Hershey and nationally Steve Allman this is name and it is in fact his real name. He teaches creative writing at Boston College and also occasionally is a commentator on the NPR affiliate in Boston WB you are. And he's talking with us by telephone in the introductory section of a book in the prologue to the book Among the things he says about himself. In addition to the

the information that he's had candy every day of his life. Also you will learn that the author thinks about candy at least once an hour he says and that the author has between three and seven pounds of candy in his house at all times will go on from there. Questions or comments of course are welcome. The number here in Champaign Urbana 3 3 3 9 5. We're 5:05 and toll free 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5 if you would like to call in. Well Steve Allman Hello. Hi how are you. I'm fine thanks and thanks very much for talking with us. Oh my pleasure. We appreciate the book is tremendous fun to read. And I I say that as someone who is not a candy freak unless I think less piece of candy I ate somebody a couple weeks before Christmas gave me a dove bite. And I think that was it and it may not be told next Christmas till I have anymore and I wouldn't feel a great loss but the but for people who are candy freaks and you know who you are I'm sure that you would enjoy the book and even if you're not I.

I think it's it's a lot of fun and it's fascinating to read about candy and how it's created and also do some of the the realities of the business particularly this business of smaller companies trying to compete with these giant companies. Sure. Yeah the Big Three are you know what I'm disturbed obviously to hear that you're not a candy freak but I think we'll be able to work through it. I hope so we'll be able to find some. Well the thing is is that for me even if you're not a candy fan the story of candy is really the story of America in the 20th century. You know that is to say it's the story of a consolidation of the few powerful essentially putting out of business who are buying out the many small of the movement from regional and civic identity and a connection with the commodities that we wear and eat every day becoming much more and more distanced and abstracted. And so I think actually people for instance if they work in a bookshop

can can relate to what happened with candy. They see Barnes and Noble and Borders kind of taking over in the small indies kind of being pushed to the fringes. Same thing has happened essentially with every industry. The sort of strange local and regional companies essentially being absorbed by the the Wal-Marts the McDonald's the coke and pepsi of the world. So in that way even if you're not particularly candy freakish there is something about America that I hope folks will take away from the book you know. Well and it also seems to be the case and you certainly are the man who would know that as Candy becomes more of a mass produced item that the quality of the products. Offers. Well let's let. I don't want to I don't want to be too reflexive in that. The reason being that really the way Candy existed and I focused on candy bars because just for a little bit of background the candy bar is a uniquely American a

cultural artifact it is our cool and airy jazz. So that's probably heresy to anybody who's a fan of you know Charlie Parker and Davis but I think it is this thing that came about and was created and popularized in America and has gone forth from there in fact I know it is candy bars after roll in that candy and chocolate in a bar form didn't exist really until the 1850s. Ari Nestle is over in Switzerland experimenting and previous to that it was something that was in liquid form mostly. You go back and look at Hogarth's prince of the chocolate parlors where people would have you know would have these essentially like a very rich cocoa not very sweet. And it was something that was almost exclusively. Consumed by the aristocracy and what you see is a gradual democratization are enough the put the book the bar into bar puts chocolate into the bar form and then in the late 19th century 1903 Milton asked her if she goes to the World's Fair sees a German exhibit of candy bars being made seized the beautiful

chocolate washing down smelt the aroma taste the bar and says this is the future freak of America. This is the next great snack product. And he essentially sets about creating a milk chocolate bar what we know of today is Hershey's chocolate and takes chocolate bars from the confectioner shops where they had existed. That is candy factories and puts them in push carts grocery stores pharmacies. So suddenly we see the candy bars start to become proliferated and then the real boom and I'm getting a little bit more history than you need but I found it fascinating because I didn't know any of this stuff previously assumed like most people oh candy bars have always existed you know prehistoric man probably ate them. In fact it was the doughboys in World War One the soldiers who were the first mass consumers of candy bars they were produced as a single serving unit really to give quick energy to the troops when they came back to the United States. They went hey where are these incredible things that we would eat and a candy bar boom

ensued in which literally tens of thousands of brands of candy bars were introduced. Now the reason for that. In fact in that in the short history of candy bars there have been an estimated 100000 brands which seems a little mind boggling into you consider that every single city in America had their own confectioner the bigger cities like Chicago and Boston and New York had literally dozens of confectionery all of whom were cranking out a new brand every single season. Some of the many new brands. And so you had this incredible proliferation of candy bar brands. But the reality was that there was so much less travel. And candy bars themselves could be transported because there weren't good highway systems and there was no refrigeration. So people were really if you know what I mean eating the local brand and they didn't know about the candy bars from other cities unless you were a traveling salesman or something with a sweet tooth. So even though there was this incredible diversity and so many more weird and wonderful

ingredients you know pineapple in it. Certainly Brazil nuts and you know truck with covered vegetables and I mean just the strangest kind of candy bars you can imagine really in unless you traveled around you didn't experience a candy bar boom in real time. Now what's happened as as the Big Three have taken over and consolidated the businesses that they've recognized that people want diversity and want variety and they have done this very clever thing which is essentially creating what's called brand extensions. So for instance you have Reese's Peanut Butter Cup and then you have Hershey's realizing that the salesmen in the consumers want something new every season so they introduced the white cup the dark chocolate cup the big cup the crunchy Cup and on and on and on. So you know that's it's sort of the Hollywood sequel version of the candy bar world. You see all this proliferation of different bars. But the sad thing is that sometimes those brand extensions are better than the original bar and I would say here is my paramount example the

Kit-Kat dark. Yes. It was dark chocolate and it's a fabulous fabulous bar just the chocolate is very cream tastes a little like chocolate pudding it's got a little coffee overtone to it and it melts. It's got a wonderful what they call mouth feel it just feels great in the mouth and they were introduced but of course the big companies have so much invested in their main brands that they don't want people they don't want these offshoots to become more popular because they're essentially taking money out of their own pocket. You know if you go and get addicted to dark as I did then you're not no longer eating kit kats. The main brands. So they introduced them for a limited period of time and then they pulled them off the shelves. And if you're somebody like me you know hard core candy freak you wind up buying you know a case of you know 12 boxes of 36 and you apparently were the only one there when it was introduced. People who discovered a lot of people discovered it thought it was really wonderful. Oh yeah. Then when the word got out there that there wasn't going to be any more that people who were

into this just went nuts and said whoa. As many of them as you can I buy em by the box now when I see them. And this is really you know to me kind of the Dow Jones of the aural experience in our cultures is the candy world. The examples that I think of you know from my childhood are still very pointed. I can't see a package of pop rocks without thinking about the pop rock freak out of the late 70s when these products first you know Pop Rocks were first introduced their candy basically that you know all the staples you know sugar and flavoring and and coloring. But they also have compressed carbondioxide so they pop in the mouth they explode literally on your tongue and this was a revolutionary if you were a 10 year old kid. So there was an incredible run on Pop Rocks when I was growing up and you couldn't find them. And there were people literally selling them out of the trunks of their cars you know kids who had sort of set up a black market. Same thing happened with Bubble Yum. When that first came out because

it was so wildly popular and there was this entire supply demand freakout that would occur and I think that still happens with Candy there's an entire cottage industry of online people who basically recognize when a brand is going to be discontinued or becomes harder to buy becomes less available and they buy up you know a great quantity of it and. People like me who are freaks go online to try to find blackjack gum or whatever it is and are willing to pay a premium price. So there's an actual world of candy speculators out there. Well you in the book I think it explained that part of the this book was born because you liked a particular candy bar and I think at this point you're talking about the caravel. Yeah you like a particular candy bar that you thought was just fabulous and that it disappeared and that does happen that candy bars are there. I mean obviously a lot of if there were 100000 of them at one time you know over time

they're not a hundred thousand now that candy bars are here and then they're gone and you sort of ask yourself well why. Why does that happen and why why is it we have something here that I think is really good. No doubt a lot of other people think it's really good so why is that. Why can't I have one. Sure. Yeah well this is the thing in fact if you want I can I can read you a little bit for people who might not remember the caravel or remember it is physically as I'm afflicted I'm tempted to just read a little bit about it. I wanted to ask you too because I think one of the things I like about the book is Your descriptions of candy. It's it's so rhapsodic it's like. I guess other kinds of food writing. It's wonderful to read people describing the experience. And this is why it really blew me away when I read it. Good Well here's here's the caravel it. Well here you go the caravel tasted more like a pastry the chocolate was thicker darker full bodied and the crisp Rice had a multi flavor and what I want to call structural integrity.

The caramel with that rarest variety dark and lustrous and supple with hints of fudge. More so there was a sense of the piece yielding to the mouth by which I mean one had to work the teeth through the sturdy chocolate shell which gave way with a distinct moist snap through the crisp Rice. Thus releasing a second grainy bouquet and only then into the soft Carmel core. Oh that inimitable combination of textures that since any of flavors and how they offer themselves to the heat and wetness of the mouth the sensation of the crisp Rice drenched in milk chocolate. I'm so drenched in melted chocolate chopped by the molders into the creamy swirl of Carmel. Oh well entity unto thee who never tasted this bar true woe true pity as you can tell I get a little bit overwrought. Well I love that and I think that's that's representative of some of the kind of writing that you'll find. Book particularly is when you talk about the exterior when it comes to candy when it comes to us. Yet when you talk with the

experience of the candy badges I just love that I read it out loud to my wife last night is here you got to hear this. I really enjoy to look good so maybe you're not a freak but maybe she's a freak maybe married well and your kids stand a chance. Well she does like chocolate that's for sure. I don't know if she would qualify as being a freak maybe. Maybe at certain times Maybe Well my feeling is that everybody has a little freak in them I'm really using that just as a kind of cutesy way to talk about obsession or you know passionate engagement would be a more euphemistic way of looking at it. And it's the truth of the matter is that everybody has something that they're obsessed about. And to me I realized in the course of writing this book you know that's really what people should be writing about and focusing on not to the exclusion of you know paying the bills and paying attention to the people in their lives but you know they tell us a lot about who we are. The more I looked at it Candy which is my freak the more I

recognized how much candy was really. The story of candy and my memories of candy were really very much the story of my life and childhood a kind of desperate need for love you know and for self-love and a certain kind of sensual pleasure and also a lot of feelings of deprivation that gave rise to that. So when I was when I was eating the caravel and remembering going to buy the caravel it had a lot to do with feeling very lonely feeling a little bit out of step with the rest of my family and kind of isolated and needing something that I could give myself. And that's that's why I think people remember the candy bars of their youth so vividly. I really do think you know the caravel the choco light the Marathon bar you know the no jelly bar. I remember these you know better in some sense better than I remember the people who I was playing soccer with. You know when I was 12 years old at 13 years old or whatever. And I think that the reason for that is because Candy really is

sort of sex drugs and rock n roll of child first transgressive pleasure. And it's also the first. Sort of act of self love. And it's also the first economic empowerment. You know everybody remembers or most people remember the first place where they went to go get candy and the feeling of having 50 cents in your hot sweaty little palm and thinking Now with this I can get Lemon has jaw breakers and hot tamales and a carousel you know. Well I do I guess it did start me thinking when I was a kid my dad a good guy and pretty indulgent parent I remembered we would go to a Walgreens It was at a little shopping center not too far from where we lived and it had a had it. Now as I think of as being a very large candy aisle and a lot of stuff there and my dad turned me on to Cadbury and I think that I do remember that he he bought the ME a caramel oh what they used to call them

though. The thing that's got chocolate. It has this liquid sort of caramel inside in these little bricks that are made into the bar. And I think even then I knew when I tasted that chocolate this something about this was a cut above a lot of the other stuff that was there and I thought to myself hey this is pretty good dad All right. Yeah you can we have some more of this right. And so yeah I guess I had might have everybody's everybody's got one in there because they really do think it runs straight from this sort of straight from the good to the candy bar to the memory bank is also people's people's sense memory is so strong when it comes to smell and taste. You know that's why they used to perfume letters in the old days you know that you know you're out on the frontier or whatever and you're your wife or lover or whoever it is sends you a letter and you know you open the letter and you smell suddenly and boom you're hit with all the memories of spending time with that person. It really is an astrologer trigger for people. And you know the fact of the matter is that you happen to have had a cut you

like the comma lies taste of Cadbury which the heat the milk to a higher temperature tastes more like a caramel chocolate. But the truth is that and I've realized this is I. This book has been in the world and I've traveled around talking with people about their likes and dislikes with candy. You can't really tell somebody else that their mouth is wrong you know as much as the French might poop who Hershey's chocolate and say oh it's barnyard chocolate tastes like sour milk or whatever. Hey you can't tell somebody else their mouth is wrong. You know you cannot say I hate coconut. The texture to me is just loathsome. But there are plenty of otherwise rational people who love coke and I and I would never tell them that you know you're wrong and that's no good I would in fact say Great please eat all the coconuts. Leave the good stuff for me. Save it for someone more deserving. We have a couple callers here. I should introduce Again our guest Steve Allman. He teaches creative writing at Boston College and he's the author of the book candy freak a journey through that. Chocolate underbelly of America published by

Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill. It's a lot of fun. Whether you are obsessed with candy or not because it's both a memoir of his personal obsession with candy but it's also some about the industry and where candy bars particularly come from how they're produced how people develop them why it is that candy bars are here and then they're gone. And also particularly this this real struggle that small regionally based manufacturers have as they try to compete with the enormous companies that the Big Three Nestle Hershey's and Mars. We have couple callers here let's talk with someone in urban online one first Yeah hi. I have two questions. Did chocolate become popular first in Holland and the second one more to the point a broader question what is it done to your weight. Well I appreciate your concern about my health. I'll handle the second one first since

I am blessed and I mean the last with a fast metabolism because I'm an ectomorph. And so what happened in my weight is I'm a skinny guy and now I'm a skinny guy with a little pot belly. I probably gained about 10 pounds are you know on this book tour so far. Because everybody brings me their chocolate and you know who am I to refuse. I want to try it. They want me to try it. So I consider professional duty so and I know it sounds tough and I don't want people to feel too sorry for me but I have been suffering for my art during this tour and I have put on some weight. You're a lucky man my hang up investment here I've been around. Absolutely well. The interesting thing about let me talk a little bit about Kennedy's origins. All of Europe actually went mad for coke Cowie and cocoa when it was originally introduced it was given to Cortez from Montezuma actually you know among his other dumb moves. Interesting Cortez

was to give him cocoa. And it was brought back to the Spanish court where it was immediately a sensation. You have to understand nobody had any idea that such a such an intoxicating flavor existed and I want to say this about chocolate. It is the greatest most complex rich fascinating delicious flavor that has ever been from you know that has ever come into being in the natural world. It has fifteen hundred distinct notes of roses and honey and even spoiled fish and all these different distinct flavor notes that without all of them it wouldn't be chocolate. And so for instance the flavor of these days can give us the taste of almost anything on earth but they're nowhere close to coming up with a facsimile for chocolate. So. So the Europeans went mad for for chocolate in fact it was somewhat of a state secret in the Spanish court. There was a great deal of desire to keep this secret under wraps. And. It Finally

LEAKED word you know a kind of spy from Italy told the Italian government about the stuff chocolate and as with the other spices and flavors sugar and coffee and tea it really drove it drove the imperialism of the new world. People forget that that much of the engine of imperialism was really the desire for delicious flavors. You know that that is the amazing thing is that people were in the end you think well you want glory and you want gold and silver and riches. What people really want is flavor. You know especially during the suit you know the centuries where salt was a fancy spice if you know what I mean. So so there was this insatiable drive to set up plantations and start to import cocoa into into the European courts. I think it really became popular initially in Spain and then in Italy and obviously France got into the picture. Now I

would say that if you want to look at the capital of chocolate making certainly Switzerland's up there. Germany has a great tradition. I would say Belgium is probably the place where there is per capita the most great candy. Which is not to say that there isn't great candy all over Europe and the United States for that matter but just by way of saying that you know really that if you go to Belgium and you you have breakfast there you're going to have a cup of coffee and a square of chocolate. Now for me I would do away with the coffee but that's me. We have another caller here and there in Belgium but it's Belgium Illinois so I love it. We'll go right here line four. Hello. Yeah I'm going to the other Belgium too and they do have tremendous chocolate. I would like to just you started a new truck. OK. And talk about the most miraculous flavor also which is the vanilla bean which is also an orchid which has lots of interesting concepts about it too. Oh sure. Yeah. Vanilla is a terrific terrific spice. I use it

in you know I use it in French toast I I think it's an amazing In fact let me recommend a bar if you're a vanilla guy. I have never understood I didn't understand until I started working on this book the whole flavor trope of chocolate and vanilla. You know it just seemed like kind of a cliche but when I had a bar called the Valen milk which is one of these regional bars to David mention made by a small company called ciphers in Kansas City or outside Kansas City. When I tasted that I was blown away. Here's the bar. It's a candy Cup. Like a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup but bigger and it's a special chocolate especially velvety and creamy he said it you know specially designed and tempered that is it is mixed by hand heated and cooled and mixed. Instead of using big machines and it's made in small batches and it's a vanilla syrup in the middle of this that is used as real bourbon vanilla. This is the vanilla from the Isle of Madagascar that used to be the Isle of bourbon which is the

capital of Manila production it's the place where the temperature and humidity is ideal for the growing of vanilla beans and its insatiable bar if you're a vanilla person you must try this. Be I if I might change your your correction just slightly thinner. You've been mainly talking just about commercially prepared bars there are some excellent candy companies around. I might also mention this is CVS from from South San Francisco. Sure. Fabulous candy here locally. Now you will not find it anyplace else Mr. Anderson his wife probably haven't even eaten yet. Right along the border here of Indiana Illinois which side located that small little town there's a type of candy called Mrs. What's Candy. Not Mrs. Welles but what can a very very very regional phenomenal Candia and I usually phenomenon I do talk in the book about and this is thank you for bringing that up because and giving me a recommendation because I will track that down or they will track me down. But I do talk in the book about there really are two. There's the big three. There are these

little regional candy bars that are still sort of clinging on to survival. And then there's a gourmet market that has emerged of that which is essentially you know chocolate that's made in small batches very great attention to the quality and unfortunately but inevitably higher price. So Godiva is sort of the the ones who realize that people would pay big money for chocolate and essentially it was sort of a return to historical roots of chocolate as a gourmet luxury product for the for the aristocracy. And now there are just terrific companies producing really amazing pieces. I visited Lake Champlain in the chocolate engineer at Lake Champlain which is up in Burlington Vermont. But we could also look at schaffen burger. You know we could look at every that the beautiful thing is that this cottage industry has really risen up and that they're grown made chocolates. Almost always you know superior to anything that the Big Three can

produce because they just think about it more carefully. I feel like I maybe should read a little bit about a lake Champlain chocolate bar did it could I do that please. OK because this is a great example of how carefully the bars are engineered. So I'm talking now about the five star Carmel bar which is from Lake Champlain. I'm talking a you know a friend of mine brought me this bar and I was it was so beautiful Actually the wrapper was so beautiful that I was sort of frightened to open it. My friend had no such compunction. She then wrapped the Carmel bar and took a bite. It was clear simply from the way her mouth addressed the bar that we were dealing with a different grade a freak. Her bite was smooth and concerted. There was an obvious density at play here though interrupted by two muted snaps. Both of which caused her a quarter moment of anguish followed by a twinge of delight registered as a flushing upon her cheeks. She moaned. It was a lovely thing to hear this reaction was in my view restrained. I've never tasted anything like the Five

Star fancy chocolates truffles and so forth are one thing but this was a fancy candy bar. Complex and nuanced marriage of ingredients there was Carmel obviously but also roasted almonds and nuggets of dark chocolate. It was draped in a thin layer of milk chocolate. The interplay of taste and textures was remarkable. The teeth broke through the milky chocolate shell sailed through the mild Carmel only to encounter the smoky crunch of the almonds and finally the rich tumescence of the dark chocolate. You almost never see milk in dark chocolate commingled but the effect in this bar was striking the sweetness of the milk chocolate rushed across the tongue played against the musky crunch of the knot then faded. The bite finished with an intense burst of dark chocolate softened by the buttery dissolution of care and now what I mean here there was a temporal aspect to the bar a sense of Evanescence and persistence because of the random placement of the almonds in dark chocolate. Each bite offered a distinct combination. It was

like eating several different bars at once. Here I think you have an addiction. And I think he'd be the first guy to admit probably that. Oh yeah absolutely I mean. But you know part of the point of the book is to get people to appreciate you know you appreciate the Nella you will realize how miraculous it is that we have such an amazing flavor it's so aromatic it's so subtle and it's powerful and that's what I want people to be is I don't want to try to stop people from consuming Candy though obviously morally I recognize it's not the greatest thing for the world economy. But I want people as long as we're going to we're going to eat candy and give ourselves that pleasure. I want people to be really conscious of the experience of the world in their mouth you know not embarrassed by it but really to embrace the the miraculous taste and textures that we're lucky enough to have these days. Thank you very much sir. Thanks for the call. Others welcome 3 3 3 9 4 5 5

toll free 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 and we could we could go out and we could get a little baby and if we dropped a drop of something sweet on her tongue she will smile. And at the same time if you take something bitter or sour and drop a drop of that on her tongue scrunched your face up and make that is a face and we know exactly what that means. So obviously we're primed from pressure maybe from coming out of the womb to like sweet stuff. But now you're taking this to an extreme and I know that it's something that you meditate on why it is that this has become just something that has obsessed you. Why do you think that some for some people they are. And he freaks and I know you say you think that a lot of people are freakish about something in a will. We'll stipulate that but you know what. Why Kandi and wife are you. Well I think some of it is genetic predisposition. I think here of my nephew Daniel Augustina age 3 just just turned 3. He

wakes up 7 a.m. he's you know not just barely 3 now walks into my brother and sister in law's room and coughs that fakes coughing actually because he knows that it's seven in the morning the closest he can get to something sweet to a piece of candy is in fact a cough drop now that nobody has taught him to like candy. He hasn't developed any emotional or psychological dynamic around candy. He just has the freak bloodlines part of it. I'm going to I'm going to cop to sort of just genetic good or bad luck however you view it. But I would also say that people do make a I think there's a powerful psychological and emotional connection that is made. You know when and it's sort of a cliche you know the the woman or man who's just been broken up with you know eating bon bons in the bath or whatever. But I do think that we use food in this culture in every culture as comfort. And we also to a large extent use food as energy and Candy is the purest form of

both of those. We get a burst of energy our mood is elevated There are all these psychoactive chemicals in chocolate that really do contribute to our feeling better about things. It's a form of self-medication. And for me I think as you're identifying somewhat bluntly it was it went probably beyond that. It certainly went beyond the whole thing nutritionally and probably And to some extent psychologically as well I really can't. They kept me company. I mean I can remember very distinctly buying candy and it would be my afternoon activity and I would take it into my room and I would put it on my bed and I would sort of play with it and in the same way that other kids would play with toy soldiers or dolls or something I was sitting there playing with candy. Now I want to say that I don't just like every candy indiscriminately and I almost feel like out of out of fairness I would like to read a short section about the candies that I truly despise. Oh that the mistakes were made. Yes indeed yes.

So the the one candy whose success is most puzzling to me in the entire world is Twizzlers Twizzlers is basically an imitation of red licorice a flavor which in itself has no cognate in the natural world. The defenders of this Candy will probably object at this point arguing that the most popular Twizzlers flavor is actually strawberry. In fact Twizzlers bears roughly the same chemical relationship to Strawberry as the Vienna sausage does to Philemon you know which is to say none of its flavor is so completely artificial that I've often wondered if the production staff might not endeavor to make it just a little bit more artificial tasting. That's crossing over an invisible flavor threshold and allowing the product to start tasting last artificial. This is distinct. Nothing of the Twizzlers texture which falls somewhere between Khaitan and rain poncho. As a former Tanya Taffy user I realize I'm not exactly on solid ground as an arbiter of taste but I can at least plead youthful indiscretion on that count. Whereas I continue to encounter grown men and women some of them otherwise desirable who

blithely chomp chomp at their Twizzlers cud reading their plasticine reek under the rest of us. To me Twizzlers belongs to the same loathsome genius genus as the juju bee. The young unfortunate reader may not have heard of juju bees in this candy will be hard to describe in a fashion that makes sense makes them sound suitable for human consumption. They were basically hard pellets the size and shape of pencil erasers. Indeed if one were to say juju bees decide pencil erasers in a blind taste test it would be tough to make a distinction. Except that pencil erasers have more natural fruit flavor. And I'm just reading a couple of examples of candies that I refer to as NWS mistakes were made marshmallow pizza a candy that encourages the notion that it is acceptable to eat child offspring composed of marshmallow dyed yellow and sprinkled with sugar. It's peanuts again a marshmallow pretending to be something else this time. A lagoon. Boston baked beans.

And here this is a direct address to the baked bean. If you are an actual pinata Why are you not covered in chocolate. Why are you covered instead in some kind of burnt tasting brick red shell. Is the idea that you resemble a baked bean supposed to make you more alluring. Chuckles a fruit jelly the consistency of cartilage. Explain. And I go on and on here with lists of candies that truly offend my sensibility. Last but not least being coconut and white chocolate and especially low some chuckles I think actually used to be made in a factory not very far from here and I don't eat it here that I don't think. I don't know if chuckle still yet available produced and I must say in the in in defense of chuckles that there is a group of people out there the same people who are probably chomping away Twizzlers who are devout and devoted fans of the chuckle. And I don't know what to say to them. In fact I have nothing to say to them other then

have at it. You know leave leave the good stuff for me. Well I do in fact I do remember jackals. That's another thing I guess I remember from my childhood. Not that I was enthusiastic but if that's all there was well you know Reagan and the other thing I remember is that one to each chuckle came in a different color which was presumably a different flavor and one of them was. Licorice Yan and I didn't like licorice when I was a kid so my grandfather who did actually he always got the black chuckle. Yes I was able to get out there and get and give a damn if it is one of those flavors that is a big divisive element. You either love the black chuckle or you hate the black. Well I would say a similar concept is you love the close neck o the purple neck o which is quote flavored or you hate the cloves Necco. Most people I'd say 90 percent despise the black chuckle despise the quote Necco the purple Macko. But there's 10 percent who are you know just absolutely as enthusiastic as everybody else is disgusted and you know it's a little bit like I'm left handed. You know I feel like

OK you know you're in the minority but you're going to have in some sense it's like sort of a badge of pride anybody who can stand a black chuckle I say hey you know should have everybody we're talking again this morning with Steve and his book is candy freak journey through the chocolate underbelly of America he teaches creative writing at Boston College. And the book is a lot of fun. Whether indeed you're a candy freak or not. We have couple callers Cyr Let's talk to them line one champagne. Hello. Yeah good morning. Well my mother was with so I was brought up on to despise her she's the kind of truck which is there is nothing like it although I am very fond of Belgian chocolate and I lived in Germany during the 70s. I thought German chocolate was quite good as well very good. And when I came back to the states in 77 to chanting Urbana all the we seem to have brought it with us. I don't know if you're familiar with that scene. It's a European

saying that kind of like a discount. No frills grocery store one brand always an off brand of each kind of thing. Sure I know there's lint. That's quite a popular brand that you could find in almost any grocery store now. Yeah. Well if the army had their their own because I thought it was a German store but somebody told me it was Dutch but anyway they would have German chocolate in it when I when they first came they would have German chocolate during the course. Season Hunter Graham virus for like 50 cents. But they've stopped doing that. But there's another issue that I have recently become aware of and that is territory cocoa just like fair trade coffee. Sure because I understand that 70 percent cocoa is grown in three countries in Africa where slavery is either tolerated or not how wide. Yep the Ivory Coast and gunna

break into neighboring countries so I wonder if you could just talk about that briefly and sure it's mentioned in the book and this is I alluded to before thank you for bringing this up. You know Candy is and chocolate in particular has always been you know predicated on cheap labor to do the difficult work of growing in farming and so forth. And as people have become aware with globalization of the you know where a bar comes from in the first world where in the developing world it actually originated from the fact that there were differences in the Ivory Coast. There have been a number of reports of parents essentially selling their children into indentured servitude to work at these chocolate plantations because the cocoa plantations are very labor intensive. And I would say this about about that there. You should be checking if you're concerned about such things in this country the way we vote is with our money and you know that sounds

crass but that's really true that's how capitalism works. So if you feel that that is a concern as you should then check and make sure that you know you're buying chocolate that's fair trade and do the things that you can do by way of telling nestle in Mar Marz and Hershey's that you don't want you know sort of blood on your chocolate so to speak. It is a real big issue and it's something that I as a candy freak kind of grapple with because I don't want to give up the pleasure of eating. You know it's one of the great pleasures of my life but I also as a kind of lefty. Who feels bad about our America sort of taking of the world's resources I also don't want to contribute to the problem. Mindlessly so I tend to try to look for if I can define chocolate better if there are fair trade and I can recommend a great chocolate to you. It's just terrific and it's made it's made in Grenada and it's it's own by grenades and they work on this to some very very small

plot of coca trees and they produce it all themselves in their own factory and I think if you go to w w w dot Grenada chocolate dot com you will find they've been two bars of 60 percent and I think it's 70 percent cocoa mass which are really fine chalk and they've got specially the 60 percent bar has an incredible flavor. A little coffee hints of Cherry And I think you can buy em on line and they're really fabulous chocolate so that's that's maybe a solution to the to the guilt but desire for chocolate problem. I just want to say for people who are here locally the common ground to a co-op which is Helen itis Apple and does have some. There can talk but I want to get well the thing for people to do really is to you know to say to your grocery store hey I want to buy you know chocolate from you but I want you to stock this stuff because as I say you know we can write about it and protest in the streets and so forth but you vote with your with your dollars in this country and that's what people should do if they want as they should for you know for there to

be socially responsible chocolate if such a thing could exist you can also get it at greater good Dachau. And then there is another brand jungle chocolate that I think you can get there that's terrific. All right well thanks very much. All right thanks. Let's go here to the next caller. And I believe that would be in someone in Savoy line too. Hello hello. Yes I am an elk. OK go ahead. Yeah I just wanted to mention something which is extremely important and I say that having the chuckle just the fact that unlike him I have to say. But one of the things that that make people like chuckles and like Twizzlers is that it's a text you're saying yeah you don't need to do food. They were at least three weeks out. Yes. This this this is a great point and I want to mention is a the foremost example of this that there's an entire community of people who can get into a long heated argument about the appropriate time that you should allow people to

cure or become stale before you consume them. I have taken part in such crazy discussions even though I myself ate pizza and some will say well you should wait a week and others that the weekend they don't get they don't get nearly to me nothing to do with the money and so forth. I just really wanted to mention one other thing which is that I had something catastrophic happened to me five years ago which it was that as a result of making certain our method. And I totally lost the ability to taste sweet to him and he thinks we owe my Irish. I know when I grew up in Coney Island the sweet capital of the world back in the in the 50s. And one thing which I noticed was in the fact that I lost 35 pounds because I don't want to eat anything. Was that sweet. Isn't just a flavor or taste that people like sweetness is used to disguise. Bitterness. Wow. Take a cola and you take away the sweet

what you have left. It's one of the most dreadful things I have ever tasted. And this has become very important in the industry where you're finding that it's just that that you lose sweet. But what you do is you bring out some flavors that you might not like it a lot. And so this is you know this is the very reason in fact you know the very reason that spices were so crucial in the Middle Ages you needed spices because there was no refrigeration half the meat they were eating. It started to turn you know so you had to have these you know pepper and salt just as a way of making food palatable. You know that is part of the purpose of spices is to disguise other flavors that are naturally this particular bitterness that are naturally you know your palate is going to revoke his wine. I just want to know that I envy you and I dislike you as well. Luke had read the book you'll dislike me even more. Thank you for the go let's go have a caller from Indiana one for Hello.

Hello yes I don't know whether you remember a bar called The Three Musketeers. Well of course it is still around I'm not sure. Well let me tell you about The Three Musketeers because it's fascinating Three Musketeers is very much still around and it's essentially at this point just a brick of chocolate New get covered in milk chocolate but the reason dude are you old enough to remember the original Musketeers back in the 30s that first came out and there were three separate little bars of different flavor chocolate vanilla and strawberry. And in fact you know people don't understand now why it's called Three Musketeers and this is a great example of a kind of homogenizing of the bars. They went with the most popular flavor which was chocolate nuke it was cheaper to produce it was less trouble. But boy I wish I could have been around for the days where you had a strawberry New get inside the Three Musketeers garter and three flavors. Yet did they taste good. Oh yes but I don't know I think I may have been before the war and maybe they went to war you know kind of thing. Bar.

Yeah well it's just a matter of production costs in many cases you know and I do think that the big bars out there you know Snickers Reese's Peanut Butter Cups the Hershey bar with all men's and so forth. I think these are really terrific candy bars I'm not going to for 65 cents or whatever they cost. That's a great deal that's a lot of happiness for that amount of money. But there were really amazing flavors. You were probably alive do you remember some of the crazy other brands and how many different brands there used to be back in the 30s. Oh yeah. Yeah there were they used pineapple flavors they used a lot of cherry and orange flavors big. You know they didn't just use caramel there was a lot of there was a lot of marshmallow new gets fondue that creams Taffy's you know there were there was just a greater diversity and what you found actually was that in particular regions you would get more ingredients from that particular region so for instance in. I don't know of all places there would be

Huckleberry bars because huckleberries are you know indigenous to Idaho and I must say although this is a shameless product plug that Dave wagers who runs the Idaho candy company which makes the Idaho Spud it's one of the regional factories I've visited is reintroducing a huckleberry bar. And here's the piece. I hope you're sitting down because this to me is miraculous especially if you've ever tasted Huckleberry which has such an intense flavor it's wonderful. It's actual huckleberries with surrounded by Huckleberry cream and then slivered almonds which have been oil fried. That is all drizzled with milk chocolate and there's a little dab of white chocolate colored purple right at the top of it. It sounds like an amazing bar where I'm hoping he's going to call it the Huckleberry Finn. Well I hope it won't cost a dollar. Well unfortunately because it's got all men's and it's going to be tough to produce it probably will be a little bit more expensive. But you never going to put out these regional companies are never going to try to be Gore may bars you know be the radio you

of course you've already discussed a Heath bar. I'm sure. Well we haven't discussed the Heath bar but that's a that's a great bar as well. You know the butter toggled are very local here yes. And recently I mean it was an independent come here until fairly recently. Yeah I think Hershey bars. Yes for she's bought it up and there was a brand that competed with the Heath bar called the score which was actually a Scandinavian bar that that Hershey's I think introduced back sometime in the in the early nineties or late 80s but the heat is it is a terrific bar as well there's no question and they're a good example of a company that for many years was independent and it's just very it's almost impossible for these small companies to to survive the boxed chocolate companies to Fannie Mae going under just recently you know you can you can look at almost any any city in America and they used to have a local confectioner that no longer exists. That's what made it so special for me to visit

you know cyphers Valla milk in Kansas City. And Dave wagers with the Idaho spot up in Boise and Marty Palmer who makes the twin being delicious cherry and chocolate peanut candy bar that's made in Sioux City. It was kind of like visiting factories if they would have existed back in the 30s or 40s or 50s and I think well things you explain in the book is that. You would have gone to one of the Big Three or the Big Three factors if they would let you. But they don't there. They're obsessed because I guess in the in the candy industry specially the big guys. There's actually industrial espionage because you can't you can't patent a candy bar and if you wanted to make a copy of somebody else's bar you'd have to call it something different but there's no reason why you can't. Precisely and people have to remember that the ingredients are so similar in most candy bars just as rhapsodic is I can be about them. Most candy bars boil down to chocolate Carmel some kind of not usually peanuts. Maybe New get you know that's the vast majority of peanut butter. That's the vast majority of our candy

bars so there is incredible paranoia in Mars for instance if a machine breaks and they need to call somebody from outside the plant to fix it. They blindfold the worker lead them to the place the panel they need to fix. They do the work they blindfold on and leave them out. That's a guy I love that story that just shows you the level of concern that they must have. Oh yeah absolutely Well it's all about getting with Candy it's all about getting the bar into people's mouth. That's why most Americans like Hershey's because that's where she got his chocolate into our mouths. You know at the turn of the century and that's how you develop taste. We're going to have to stop I'm sorry we could go another hour I'm sure. The book has a lot of fun there's more like that in the book candy freak. So if we have now got you excited and go out and get a chocolate and get the book by our guest Steve Allman he teaches creative writing at Boston College. That's Thanks very much Steve. Oh it was my pleasure.