Candy Dish Blog

Today is the first day back to school after a long weekend (very long if you’re from the Washington DC area).  We can thank our former presidents for our lovely little vacation, well and the powers who be for the snow that caused the East Coast’s lovely snow-cation.  Anyway, some of us may find ourselves having trouble focusing on this first day back after the break.  We may be more excited about catching up with our buddies than catching up on our work.

Neither our current president, nor any past presidents for that matter, would be pleased by our difficulties paying attention.   In his back to school speech this year, President Obama urged students to take their education seriously and work hard to meet their goals.  Focus is one of the most essential components to being successful in school or anything you choose do.  If 90% of life is showing up, most of the rest of it is simply paying attention.

A recent study found that students who chewed gum had significantly better concentration than those who didn’t.  It is thus not surprising that research by the Wrigley Company discovered that chewing gum improved student’s performance on tests and ultimately resulted in higher grades.  Chew on that!

Not a day goes by that I don’t hear about some new study linking chocolate consumption to heart health.  No seriously, I get these daily pubmed updates e-mailed to me. They’re great. You should try them.  Oh, what’s that?  Normal people don’t read the latest scientific abstracts for fun? Oh well, you don’t need to be a nerd like me to know what’s going on with chocolate and health, as it is science anyone can bite into.

Many studies in both humans and rodents have observed lower deaths due to heart disease in chocolate consumers compared to non-consumers of chocolate.  This is an exciting and interesting phenomenon for us chocolate lovers, but certainly inspires wonder as to why this association exists.  Tons of scientists are asking the same question, hence the growing body of research filling my inbox.

Results from most studies looking at blood pressure and chocolate consumption show that flavanols (the antioxidants in chocolate) reduce blood pressure and risk for hypertension.  Studies have also found that these antioxidants fight inflammation in the heart muscles, leading to overall better heart health.  Meanwhile, stearic acid, one of the fats in chocolate, is thought to have a positive benefit on blood cholesterol levels.  These examples reflect some of the most common conclusions. However, scientists are coming up with new ideas about how chocolate might be beneficial to the heart all the time.

So when your sweetie gives you a box of chocolate from their heart on Valentine’s Day, remember it just might help out yours.

Editor’s note: Yes, we know it’s not Tuesday. In the midst of the blizzard coming through the DC area, some things slipped by us. I will continue to blame the oompa loompas until someone can legitimately point a finger my way.

Woven heart and passion fruit chocolates by jamescronin.

Disclaimer; I am in fact a scientist, and we are not traditionally known for our smooth social skills.

One of the most important factors to bear in mind whilst searching for your V-day date is keeping it cool.  Nobody wants to go out with a nervous babbling stress ball.  Also, clean up your breath. Hot, stinky, nasty breath is just one word: unacceptable. Uh uh.  I may not know from personal experience, but statistically 9 out of 10 propositions fail when stank breath is involved‡.

Good news though. There is one solution to both of these dating no-no’s.  Chew a piece of sugar-free peppermint gum or pop a little mint into your mouth.  The minty flavor will freshen your breath and cool you down, or at least trick your nerve cells into thinking they are cooler.

One of the dominant flavor compounds in mint, methyl salicylate, interacts with specialized nerve cells that sense temperature.  This minty flavor molecule triggers nerve cells to send the “I’m cool” signal to your brain, although there is no actual temperature change.  Convenient, as prior to making your move, your brain could use all the false cool hopes it can get.

Follow my advice and I guarantee that sparks will be flying.  If not with your new sweetheart, your mint candy can substitute for this phenomenon.  The mint flavor compound menthanol has the ability to fluoresce, which accentuates normal static sparks so that they become visible. Chomp down on a mint Lifesaver in the dark with your valentine and watch the sparks fly.

‡Editor’s note: This statistic was made up by Laura, and although believable, is not based in scientific fact. But take care of that stank breath anyway. Your date will thank you.

A pair of hearts… by Nanimo.

Like Carl, I am often envied by my friends for my sweet gig as a candy scientist here at the National Confectioners Association. There are different types of candy scientists in the industry. For example, research and development scientists work on developing new flavors and formulas, while quality control scientists make sure the candy is safe to eat and consistently delicious, and engineers work on fixing and maintaining the equipment used to make candy.

My job is actually quite unique. I spend a lot of my time helping confectioners understand all of the government rules and laws that they need to follow, including really tiny boring details like the exact font size their labels must be printed in. I also get to help promote industry-wide collaboration on scientific projects such as designing equipment to make candy safer and developing a method to measure antioxidants in chocolate. Another fun part of my job is putting on industry short courses about the science and safety of candy production. When I’m not busy with candy school, laws, or coalitions, I just help out when anyone needs a scientific opinion on candy, or anything in general, such as how to make cheese out of eggnog (not recommended, btw).

The luckiest part of my job for me is that it’s my first job out of school and I wasn’t even quite finished with my master’s degree when I started working here. My first day of work was at the candy expo, a welcome change from the 18 years I had spent in school prior to that day.

I first got involved in the satisfying field of candy science as a freshman in Food Science at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. I started working as a lab assistant with my advisor, who happened to study chocolate and ice cream. Food Science was a fun major and particularly employable. I had two internships – one at ADM Cocoa, where I worked at a cocoa plant in the Netherlands, and another one at General Mills, where I helped formulate Nature Valley Granola Bars.

I went on to graduate school where I learned more about health, science and policy and the opportunity to apply to this job came as random luck through a conversation I had when I happened to run into my old college advisor. Basically, I think Carl’s paradigm applied to getting my job as well, but I think that for me, the biggest component of being good at something had to do with my passion for learning about food.

Editor’s note: Many thanks to Laura, who agreed to merge the Careers in Candy theme with her weekly Candy Science Tuesday post.

Science Lab by *Maya*

Remember Mikey from the Life commercials?  It’s ok if you don’t.  To be honest, I don’t either, nor, to Susan’s dismay, do I remember The Facts of Life, Different Strokes, or Laverne & Shirley.  As I stared at Susan blankly while she sang me these unfamiliar theme songs, she exclaimed “ya know what’s wrong with your generation?  Your sitcoms didn’t have theme songs.”

Psh, well at least my generation never believed that eating Pop Rocks and drinking soda made some cereal commercial kid’s stomach explode!  My generation is far too skeptical to believe such absurd rumors.  Besides, we’ve always had the internet to dispel urban legends with real hard scientific facts.

The candy science of Pop Rocks is surprisingly simple.  They are made almost the same way as typical hard candy.  The only difference is that prior to the cooling step, the hot liquid sugar is carbonated with tiny little bubbles of carbon dioxide.  When the sugar solution hardens into candy, the CO₂ bubbles become trapped in the solid candy matrix.  Soda is carbonated the same way, except that it remains a liquid.

We should really get Carl to help us with the math, but the total amount of CO₂ will be equal to the sum of the CO₂ in the soda and the CO₂ in the Pop Rocks.  No extra CO₂ or other potentially explosive gases are produced by this combination, thus no explosion ensues.

Don’t believe me?  Try this rockin’ experiment yourself.  Pour one packet of Pop Rocks into a balloon.  Slowly enclose the balloon over the opening of a small Coke bottle.  Let the contents of the balloon fall into the coke bottle and see what happens.  In the theoretically unlikely event that the balloon pops, please report back here to discuss your results.

Pop Rocks by inajeep.

Chewing gum is one of the oldest candies known to mankind. In fact, archeologists have discovered evidence of gum from prehistoric times. While gum chewing as a practice has endured the test of time, individual flavors of gum have extremely variable timelines. Some gum flavor lasts longer than others, or at least seems to.

An important aspect of gum flavor perception is actually the sweetness factor. Our brain cannot always distinguish between the signal for sweetness and the signal for a flavor. So, long lingering sweetness can prolong the perception of flavor. Gum can be made with either sugars or artificial sweeteners and typically, artificially sweetened gum maintains sweetness longer than sugary gum thus seeming to prolong flavor retention.

The type of flavoring used also determines the strength and length of gum flavor. Flavor chemicals each have a unique volatilization temperature that causes the flavor to dissipate. Usually fruity flavors volatilize at much lower temperatures than mint flavors, which is why these flavors loss potency most quickly. Other factors can also influence flavor duration. Flavors can be encapsulated or crystallized leading to increased chew-life.

Don’t believe me? You probably shouldn’t, as good scientists need to be skeptical. Answer your gum flavor questions yourself via simple experimentation. Select five of your favorite gums and at least three of your favorite friends (for statistical significance). Randomize the gum order and administer the gum in a double-blind fashion by having one person code the gum and another person distribute the coded samples. Chew until the flavor disappearance is observed and record the flavor length of each coded sample. Your results will leave you something to chew on.

Ever wonder what makes chocolate taste so good? The answer, apart from chocolate’s extraordinarily diverse array of flavor compounds, is the same answer to what makes just about anything taste good: the fat. Though fat alone is usually devoid of flavor, it acts to enhance just about anything with which it is paired.

The fat in chocolate is cocoa butter. Cocoa beans are composed of 53% cocoa butter, which is separated from ground cocoa beans (known as chocolate liquor due to its liquidy consistency) by pressing through a metal sieve under high pressure. The by-product of this process is especially celebrated in the coming winter months—cocoa! After pressing, cocoa butter is then reunited more chocolate liquor and sugar to make the fabulous substance we know as chocolate.

In addition to bolstering chocolate flavor, cocoa butter is also responsible for chocolate’s unique melting profile and delightful mouth feel. Chocolate melts at precisely 96.8 degrees Fahrenheit because of cocoa butter’s elegant composition. Most fats, such as dairy fat for example, are made up of dozens of different types of fatty acids, each with a specific melting point. Think of butter melting on the stove…the clear yellow part is the first to liquefy, followed by the turbid white part. Cocoa butter is composed simply of three fatty acids: oleic acid, palmitic acid, and stearic acid, all with similar melting points and for this reason chocolate exhibits a very narrow melting range.

Stearic acid, one of cocoa butter’s fatty acid trio, is most definitely saturated in terms of its hydrocarbon structure but has been shown to have a neutral (and in some studies, positive) effect on blood cholesterol levels. This was a hot topic of discussion at the USDA’s 2010 Dietary Guidelines Committee meeting last week, a meeting held every five years to revise USDA’s nutritional recommendations. The experts reviewed data on stearic acid, concluding it to be cholesterol neutral and debating the merits of a more health-oriented nutritional labeling plan.

Some of you might be thinking, “Yeah yeah, we all love fat too but isn’t it one of those no-no foods, not to be celebrated and praised, but rather avoided and renounced?” Fat is pretty much the most calorie-dense substance nature could come up with, a characteristic less appreciated in today’s food-secure environment than previous times of human existence, and as such needs to be consumed in moderation.

Furthermore, overconsumption of some fats raises harmful cholesterol levels in the blood, eventually leading to negative effects on cardiovascular health. The distinction between cholesterol-raising and cholesterol-lowering or neutral fats is usually communicated by the degree of saturation, a characteristic of a fat’s chemical structure rather than healthful attributes. Saturated fat is warned to be cholesterol-raising and unsaturated fat is lauded as cholesterol-lowering or neutral. As with many scientific communications, this is an oversimplification of the truth to the extent that it might be misleading.

However, rest assured that stearic acid, part of the goodness of chocolate, breaks the mold for this rule of “saturated fat equals bad for you.” Don’t think that a chocolate bar is going to cure you of anything more than a snacktime hunger, but don’t be afraid of it either.

Chocolate by rachel is coconut&lime.