Clever Currents: Is Organic Candy Any Better Than The Usual Stuff?

First off – I am a salt person, not a sweet tooth. However, when I was in sixth grade, I wrote a report on candy. This was decades before the internet, and my method was to copy paragraphs neatly out of World Book Encyclopedia, Volume C. I did tape some wrapped hard candies to the cover, and I think that may be why I got an A. I don’t follow the candy industry, but lately I have been hearing about organic candy, and skeptic that I am, I had to look into it. No World Books available, I started with Google. I found a very well-written candy blog by Cybele May, a playwright. As she points out, there are not that many “green candy” options at the big chain grocery stores. Cybele’s research convinced me that if you are willing to get online to find them, there are some substantially better candy products on the market today. You might even get your sixth-grader to write a report on it.

The Blue Lake take on it:
OK, it is still sugar. And we have made it clear our belief that kids are getting too much sugar (with lots of help from the marketers of sugar-laden cereals, “fruit drinks” and the like). Still, it’s hard to deny candy at Halloween, and we like the idea of supporting companies that make the effort to offer additive-free, naturally flavored and colored sweets. So if you are looking for a simple and different option for this year’s neighborhood goblins, you might try these organic lollipops from Yummy Earth (founded by two dads). They have cool flavors (pomegranate, mango, watermelon) and only 22 calories per lollipop. The calories are all sugar, but you can feel pretty good about the ingredient list. We just ordered the bonus pack of 220 lollipops, and with shipping it works out to about 14 cents each. If you get your child interested in the topic of organic food by starting with candy, they might be motivated to learn more about healthy and earth-friendly food production.