Sweet Nothings

As the days grow shorter, we enter, sweetly, into everyone's favourite time of year —— Candy Season. 

Things kick off at Hallowe'en with secret stashes of bite-sized Snickers. December's high holy days of peppermint bark, rum balls, and macaroons melt into Valentine's sampler box of assorted creams. And we don't emerge from the sugar coma until we've bitten off the chocolate Easter bunny's ears. By April, If we're lucky, our blood sugar A1C will just squeak in under the diabetes threshold of 7.0, "Yes! My body can still make its own insulin!"

We get all spring and summer to detox, ready to start anew when October rolls around again. Will we ever learn? Not likely. 

What is it with our sweet tooth, anyway? 

Preferring sweet over bitter is in our DNA. It's self defense, passed down across the aeons from our prehistoric ancestors. Babies learn to distinguish between the pleasantly sugary sensation of mashed carrots — a biological mechanism that helps them avoid potentially toxic substances — like, say, mashed turnips. From there It's a slippery slope to Cap'n Crunch and Froot Loops. 

According to my research, the term, "sweet tooth" dates way back to the 1300s — (you could say it is an idiom that is "long in the tooth," ha ha) — a reference that meant food was "toothsome" or tasty — i.e. sweet to the palate. 

Clearly, we come by our love of sugar naturally. Kids grow up believing that candy is their birthright. As adults, we lap up headlines about chocolate being good for us like it's the only good news on Planet Earth. Even our language is sprinkled with candied phrases: sweet talker, sugar coated, sugar Daddy, sugar pill, short and sweet, your own sweet time, a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, sugar buzz, a sweet deal, as sweet as pie, like taking candy from a baby — which I think might be harder than it sounds.

Children are supposed to love candy, aren't they? Everybody does. Right? Not this kid. I was the oddball who couldn't give two hoots about Hallowe'en loot. Sure, it was fun to go out and collect it like all the other little hooligans in the neighbourhood. But I was only playing along, feigning my glee about the eventual sugar OD. And the next day at school, when kids would groan about their stomachaches and glucose-induced hangovers, I'd be like, all smug. By January, my bagful of unwrapped candy (nothing came wrapped in those days) would be stuck to the side of the breadbox where it got stuffed on November 1st. Inside, the jaw breakers, licorice whips, candy corn, and Bazooka gum would congeal into one sticky, rock hard lump of crystallized sugar, looking like a neon geode from the Cenozoic era. My mother would throw it in the trash.

I grew out of that phase. Now I can put away a mini Coffee Crisp or Kit Kat with the best of them.

These days chocolate bars and Smarties come in hygienic little wrappers with no expiry dates. If you bought the Hefty Pak for your Trick or Treaters, I bet you saved some for yourself. ("One for the kiddies. Two for me.") You could easily indulge your sugar habit until candy cane season. 

At our house, we hand out toothbrushes. Trick or Treat, kids! The candy is for MEEEEEE! Bwa-hah-hah-hah-hah!

Happy Hallowe'en!