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!

I love the animation on the Stride Gum contest’s site. The freight elevator, blinged-out ram, money… A genius invented this thing. From the Stride Web site:

Do people say your ideas are ridiculous? Perfect, that’s just what we’re looking to finance here at The Vault! Tell us all about the most ridiculous thing you’ve always wanted to do and why and you could be a monthly winner of $5,000!

What ridiculous ideas do you have? I am pretty sure I am not eligible, since here at NCA we are business partners with them, but if I could enter, I think I would write about my desire to move to Thailand and become a Buddhist monk. Or I might write about the chocolate zucchini bread Susan made. Because, really, chocolate and zucchini in the same food item is crazy talk and it ended up being crazy delicious.

Something else of note on the Stride Web site is Dancing Matt, who became Internet famous about five years ago and inspired my friend Amanda Congdon to make a similar video when she worked for Rocketboom.

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.

Our intern, Marc, whom you met yesterday, was inspired to write a blog entry on baseball and candy. He even strong-armed Tori, our resident sports nut, into letting him cover this issue. A true Yankees fan, we know which way Marc is leaning for this series, but he does a good job not bringing baseball politics into the discussion. Yesterday was Marc’s last day in our department, so next week somebody else gets to ride him like a rented mule. Good times, Marc. Read on:

Ah, the end of October, the happiest time of year in the candy world. The day before Halloween is like black Friday in the candy industry, it just so happens that this year, the date actually falls on a Friday. But Halloween is not the only thing on the mind of us candy lovers.

Like everybody else out there, the World Series has us hooked. But luckily, we don’t have to choose between the two. There are many ways to combine candy and baseball. The two have been related since early in the 20th century. From cotton candy to Cracker Jacks, players today still love their candy.

This year New York Yankees manager Joe Girardi decided he wanted to replace the candy in the dugout with nuts and granola bars. This didn’t stop the Yankees players, as they were caught smuggling the forbidden stuff (candy bars, not steroids) into the clubhouse.

Candy has been a part of the World Series as well. After Babe Ruth called his shot in the 1932 World Series, the Curtiss Candy Company installed an illuminated Baby Ruth Candy Bar sign in the spot in center field where the Bambino had hit this historic home run. The sign lasted at Wrigley Field for the next four decades. In the 1970’s, New York Yankee’s All-Star and World Series hero Jim Bouton decided he wanted to create a fun-alternative to chewing tobacco. He pitched the idea of Big League Chew, a shredded bubble gum, to the Wrigley Company, aiding in its creation and adding to the popularity of candy in baseball.

The fun combination does not have to remain in the depths of baseball history. You can help continue the legacy of candy in baseball by combining them both. Celebrate the World Series and Halloween in your own way. You can go trick-or-treating as your favorite Yankees player. Or you can collect your candy in a Phillies candy bucket.

What candies delight your palate while watching the big game?

Baseball Game Candy by niallkennedy.

Congratulations to our two lucky haiku contest winners – Katharine and Susan!

Katharine wrote a poem that taps into the Zen background of writing haiku. Like the emptiness of a cup, which gives shape to the tea we pour into it, Katharine’s bubble gives shape to the air inside it but is eventually overcome by its own ultimate emptiness. It is a microcosm through which we can see our own lives. The moment of splat brings us back to the present moment, just as the instructive tongue of a teacher would reawaken our attentive ear. The ending of the poem begs the question, “Where is the bubble now that it has gone?” The answer, of course, is that there is no bubble.
I’m blowing bubbles
Stretchy pink little bubbles
Splat! bubble is gone

Susan wrote a haiku that also taps into the Zen tradition. Zen teaches us that all things are temporary. Not only is physical form temporary, as Katharine points out with her bubble, but also states of being are also transitory. Susan goes from pain to relief. Good Zen practice is dependent upon overcoming distractions. Some physical ones, like this aural discomfort while flying, are easily dispatched with, making way for us to develop a single-pointedness of mind.
Pain in ears building
Plane ascends in sapphire sky
Chew now, such relief.

Both our prize winners have been contacted and their prizes will be mailed as soon as possible. Keep an eye out for more contests, which will be announced very soon!

Daruma by Pixteca MX【ツ】.

What I like about this photo are the bright primary and secondary colors of the gum against the stark white background. You can practically see the fun emanating from the gumballs!

Do you want your candy photos featured here? Submit them to the Candy Dish Blog Flickr group. We want to see your candy photos and so does the rest of the world!

I was just sent some Trident Layers gum from my pal Tim, who works with Trident. Well, he’s my pal now. I don’t really know him, but anybody who sends me candy or gum is my pal. Trident Layers is a new gum that comes in two flavor fusions: green apple and golden pineapple, and wild strawberry and tangy citrus. The gum is a tri-level construction: the apple and strawberry being the bisected by pineapple and citrus, respectively. It is a very solid looking gum, evidenced by the multiple layers.

So what are we going to do with this free gum that came in the mail so mysteriously? We are giving it to you. You have to do something to win it, though. Write a haiku about gum in the comments to enter. Make it funny, serious, happy, wistful, serene, thought-provoking, happy or anything else, as long as it is gum-positive. Here is how you can get extra entries:

• Write another haiku and post it as a separate comment.
• Tweet each of your gum haiku to us at @CandyUSA.

That’s right, you have multiple opportunities to win. As Susan wrote when I told her about this, “unlimited chances to win!” Well, we have to review our definition of unlimited, as we did with Tori recently, but let’s just say there are many, many opportunities to win. Winners will be chosen on Friday, Oct. 2nd.

On Haiku
If you need a reminder about what haiku is, it is a short three-lined poem whose lengths are 5, 7 and 5 syllables, respectively. The true master of haiku is Matsuo Bashō, who lived from 1644-1694, during Japan’s Edo period. We are going to do one better than he ever did, though, because I am pretty sure he never wrote about gum. See some examples from our staff:

Susan:
It stuck in my hair
Now I have to cut it out
Always wanted bangs

Tori:
Put the quarter in
Watch it spiral down the shoot
Blow a big bubble

Carl:
Sweet, chewy pink gum
Its scent unmistakable
Starts my day off right

Laura:
What is there to do
When you don’t have time to brush?
Chew a piece of gum.

Now it’s your turn. Don’t forget to get extra chances to win!