It's that time of year again: A string of holidays that promote the consumption of candy, chocolate, and other sweets. The offending holidays' names? Halloween (all about candy), Thanksgiving (you need some dessert and apple pie to balance out all the turkey and gravy, right?), Christmas (Candy canes and silver lanes aglow and all that), then a sneaky one because it's the next calendar year but still in that winter season: Valentine's Day in February, and in Japan there's even a BACKWARDS Valentine's Day called White Day where there's even more chocolate consumed......Really a damning time for our already inflated waistlines, especially with all the processed sugars in candy, the winter hibernation and sitting around and cold weather really doesn't help any of that.
Continuing the rant (It's not over!), candy is the one food that actually gives no nutritional value! All it does is give people a sugar high and doesn't fill them up (actually does the opposite by giving a stomache). Count running out after sugar too, because sugar that tricky fellow gives a quick boost of energy for like the first minute of the run, you feel on top of the world, and then it rips the high from under you and there's a major crash, no energy.
My personal nutritionist (she also happens to be my wife) tells me that we should eat a lot of foods that have different colors because they all have different nutrients to them.....especially green, red, purple, orange, etc.......that's awesome for a salad. But chocolate.......chocolates have all the wrong colors, the thick coating of brown, the milk chocolate white indicating dairy, cheese, and richness.....and the golden yellow of peanut butter, very ominous colors for a healthy lifestyle. Also black? really dark chocolate = really bad for teeth.
With all those caveats to discourage kids from eating candy and getting hooked on candy, here are my top candies to have (if you must, use with extreme discretion):
1.) Snickers: Hungry? Why wait. The heyday of the chocolate/sweets industry left us with so many great commercials, and their advertising campaign still produces great ones like "You're not yourself when you're hungry. Have a snickers." Couple that with the rich creamy milk chocolate and peanut butter taste, it's what most people think about when they think of a chocolate bar.
2.) Kit Kat: Gimme a break, gimme a break. Break me off a piece of that.....(even featured in an episode of The Office, Andy trying to sing that song, it was so mainstream). Very crispy, has its name ingrained on each piece for more subliminal enforcement, wafer-style makes me want it just thinking about it. Also comes in Green Tea now, and Japanese people give them out for people taking exams as encouragement because it sounds like "Must win" in Japanese.
3.) M&M's: still people dressing up in the colorful costumes and used to own a M&M shaped chair. Like the variety of peanut butter, cinnamon, and the ability to stop after consuming just a few pieces of regret.
Further down: Reese's gets mushed too much
Underrated: Almond Joy. Almond + chocolate + coconut = enough of a taste differentiation from other chocolates to feel really special (ever notice how some chocolates just mix together and it all starts tasting the same after a while?)
Only consume if you're in a bind and there's literally no under candy around: Hershey's. Bland, no innovation, maybe they shouldn't stay "unchanged since 1899" anymore and actually like, you know, evolve and improve .
Snickers's inferior cousins: 3 Musketeers, Milky Way.
Twizzler's or Red Vine: really, are these even candies?
Seriously though, I can't believe my parents let me consume all this stuff when I was a kid and ruin my teeth/my diet/ become chubby! They're scientists too, they should know about addiction! I had to become an adult to detox on all these sugars! Shame! Only give ONE piece of candy as a reward for eating a WHOLE salad or doing a FULL workout. Nothing tastes good anymore after eating candy, and the artificial of it all comes out. Eat sweet fruits like grapes or oranges as a replacement, you'll thank me later, kids of the world.
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
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