Life Wasn't Always As Sweet As It Is Today
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Nonfiction PAIRED TEXTS texts that share a theme or topic Life wasn’t always as sweet as it is today. BY LAUREN TARSHIS ILLUSTRATION BY GARY HANNA 22 SCHOLASTIC SCOPE • OCTOBER 2015 SCOPE.SCHOLASTIC.COM • OCTOBER 2015 23 Making lozenges was time- almost any American who wanted it. AS YOU READ, Candy for Dinner THINK ABOUT: consuming. Each one had to be He named his new candies—hard, shaped by hand like a tiny cookie. quarter-sized sugar wafers sold in magine you’re a kid living in America in 1920, importance of vitamins was How have attitudes about sugar changed since the 1800s? So Chase invented a hand-cranked stacks—Chase Lozenges. They were and your parents are too busy to cook dinner. not well understood. Many machine that would let him quickly an immediate hit. IInstead, they serve you something they are scientists believed that t was 1847, and for create large batches of lozenges sure is just as healthy as chicken and vegetables: candy was just as healthful months, Oliver Chase that were all the same size and Sweet Treats for All a chocolate bar. Sounds a little crazy now, but as as steak and potatoes or had been tinkering with a thickness. He was thrilled with his Chase’s lozenge-making recently as the 1940s, many Americans believed that fish and broccoli. Candy brand-new invention that amazing lozenge machine. But it machine was soon being sold candy was as nutritious as an entire meal. Today, we companies wanted people would change America— was his next idea that would make across the country. For the first understand that some foods are better for us than to believe this too. Ads for and the world. him famous: Why not use his new time, American candymakers others. You probably know that the oatmeal and Milky Way suggested that Chase was a pharmacist; he sold invention to create lozenges that could produce sweet treats in large fruit you wisely ate for breakfast were packed with each bar contained a glass of milk (not true). There Imedicines out of his small shop were just candy? quantities and sell them cheaply in vitamins and other nutrients. You probably know as was even a popular candy bar called Chicken Dinner in Boston. Like most pharmacists Back in the early 1800s, candy stores. well that those chewy candies stashed in your drawer (which, thankfully, did not contain chicken). of the time, Chase made his own was popular in Europe but Suddenly you didn’t have to are little more than sugar. Even little kids understand Today, we know the dangers of eating too much remedies. His most popular were extremely expensive in America. be rich to afford a rope of tangy that eating too much sugar is unhealthy. sugar. We also have laws that prohibit companies lozenges, small discs made of Only a few kinds were available— red licorice or a mouthwatering Back in the early 1900s, the science of nutrition— from creating advertisements that lie about products. mashed-up herbs, chemicals, and clumps of tooth-busting rock buttercream. Stores sold dozens the study of how foods affect the body—was new. We still love candy, of course. But most of us other ingredients. People bought candy, sticks of homemade of varieties of “penny candies” People knew that food provided energy, but the understand it’s best left for dessert. • lozenges hoping to relieve their peppermint, and sticky lemon displayed in glass jars. sore throats, aching heads, and drops—and even those were hard As the decades passed, steam- runny noses—though in truth, the to find. Kids who craved sweets powered candy machines replaced Candy Classics $33.6 billion worth a year. America’s first machine-made lozenges didn’t work very well. On had to settle for dried fruits or Chase’s hand-cranked roller. By the 1920s, Americans could Candymakers have continued candies survive, though their top of that, they tasted disgusting, puddings sweetened with a cheap Companies competed fiercely choose from thousands of different to dream up new kinds of candies name was changed to Necco like dirt mixed with grass. To make syrup called molasses. to introduce new flavors and kinds of candies of every size, to surprise and delight us. In the Wafers. They are still made in them more palatable, most were But Oliver Chase was about to textures—chewy jelly beans, waxy texture, and flavor. Many classic early 1980s, the first gummy bears Boston, at a factory not far from covered with a hard candy shell. help put candy into the mouth of candy corn (known back then as chocolate bars and invaded America from the pharmacy where they were “chicken feed”), gooey caramels, candies introduced Germany. Around invented. In 2009, the makers of fluffy marshmallows. Candymakers nearly a century ago the same time, candy Necco Wafers decided to make MILLION even sent spies to Europe to steal are still beloved today, scientists combined them healthier. They removed the secret candy recipes and smuggle including Milky Way, sugar with malic acid chemical flavorings and colors. them back to America. Milk Duds, Tootsie to create super-sour, Big mistake! Loyal customers POUNDS The biggest candy breakthrough Roll, and the world’s mouth-puckering were furious. Sales dropped 35 35 came in 1899, when a Pennsylvania current No. 1-selling candies like Warheads. percent, and the company decided the amount of candy corn made each year candymaker named Milton Hershey candy bar, Snickers. Today, chocolates to return to the original formula. figured out how to turn chalky Far fewer kinds of Oliver Chase and his are mixed with exotic So today, if you bite into a crunchy (That’s about 9 billion pieces—enough to circle candymaking machine. and bitter cocoa into candy are sold today flavors, like cayenne Necco Wafer, you are tasting candy the moon 20 times.)* His creations eventually creamy milk chocolate than were sold during became known pepper and açai [ah- history. • bars. His Hershey’s candy’s “golden age” in as Necco sah-EE] berry. Wafers. Kisses and Bars the 1920s and 1930s. And Chase became bestsellers. LAURA EISENBERG/GETTY IMAGES BUYENLARGE/GETTY IMAGES (CANDY BOX); ARTWORK COURTESY 2015 (OLIVER OFCHASE); BOSTON GLOBE/GETTY THEIMAGES (NECCO WAFERS); ROBERT NEWCLARK/INSTITUTE (CUPCAKE) ENGLAND CONFECTIONERY COMPANY But Americans still devour Lozenges? Turn to read a shocking sugar story! *SOURCE: NATIONAL 24 SCHOLASTIC SCOPE • OCTOBER 2015 CONFECTIONERS ASSOCIATION SCOPE.SCHOLASTIC.COM • OCTOBER 2015 25 INFORMATIONAL TEXT plus an army of chemicals that the body has to pump why humans have a sweet tooth. One theory is that out to manage large doses of sugar. people like sweet things because the first thing most Now, eating a big fat cupcake every once in a of us taste—our mother’s milk—is sweet. Another This while isn’t going to hurt anyone. But having too many theory is that a fondness for sweetness helped early cupcakes—and cans of soda and bottles of sports humans: Sweet-tasting foods like berries, plums, and Cupcake Is drinks and cartons of sugary yogurt and many other grapes provided them with the energy they needed to sugary foods—leads to problems far worse than a survive. sugar crash. Large quantities of sugar have a powerful It wasn’t until the late 1800s, however, that Trying to and damaging impact on the body. And today’s kids most humans were able to satisfy their craving for and teens are consuming very large quantities of the sweetness with pure sugar. Before then, sugar was Hurt You sweet stuff—a staggering 19 teaspoons of added sugar a luxury that only the very rich could afford to bake a day, on average. That’s about three times too much, into their cakes or spoon into their tea. You may never experts say. (Ideally, a teen should consume no more In 1801, the average American was eating roughly look at sweets than 6 teaspoons per day.) 8 pounds of sugar a year. Today, the average American So why is sugar so bad? eats about 130 pounds of sugar a year, according the same way to some estimates. That’s enough to fill a again. Terrifying Diseases AHHHH! giant bathtub! Too much sugar! By Kristin Lewis When you chug down a huge bottle of soda and Lauren Tarshis or demolish a bag of candy, you send a giant A Nation of Soda Guzzlers dose of fructose straight to your liver. (Fructose is The roots of today’s sugar crisis go back a form of sugar found in almost any sweetener, to around 1980, when some experts decided including white sugar, honey, and high-fructose that the major threat to our health was not corn syrup.) Some of that fructose gets sugar but fat. Food companies responded by converted to fat, which can accumulate introducing fat-free and low-fat versions of a in your liver. “Over the long term, sugar plethora of foods, from cookies and cakes can cause scarring and cirrhosis, a liver to cheeses and yogurts. But removing fat disease that never goes away,” says Robert from food robs it of flavor and texture (think: magine that you are a cupcake—an enormous He gobbles you up and brushes the crumbs from his Lustig, a pediatrician at the University of cookies that taste like wet cardboard). Adding cupcake, as big as a softball with a gooey crown T-shirt. California, San Francisco. sugar improves the taste—and that’s why a low-fat of sweet frosting and, for good measure, a Yum! New studies have linked high-sugar diets to a host food typically has more sugar than the regular version.