You may be surprised how close many candies are to being pure sugar with food coloring.
Grab a fistful of whatever candy you're thinking about when you say that and put it in your mouth. Then once you've done that, try doing the same with pure sugar. Tell me if you think you got different amounts of sugar in your mouth or not.
It's not the first time I hear this soundbite, and while it perhaps sounds cool as a TikTok comment, it really doesn't make much sense in reality.
Take pure sugar, add to hot water to make a thick syrup, add food colouring, cook at two hundred and something degrees. Hard candy.
Most other candy recipes are similar, and over 50% sugar by weight. Sugar is the main ingredient by weight after water of many drinks.
You're being deliberately obtuse if you continue to insist on comparing a bag of sugar to something made mostly of sugar. It's like saying "You like steak? Ok, go lick that cow then tell me you like steak!" - it's a straw man argument.
Then I did something like "3 pieces weigh 18g with ~11g total sugars and 17g total carbs so about 61% sugars"
I've been told to use an offhand rule of fiber vs sugar as a ratio. For every 1 gram of fiber 'up to' 50 of carbs ~ calories, with lower better.
Fiber also has other benefits https://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/healthy-eating/fiber-helps-diab...
(plus some other quick search results)
https://www.calculatorultra.com/en/tool/carbohydrate-to-fibe...
https://www.everydayhealth.com/diabetes/the-ratio-of-fats-ca...
> I've been told to use an offhand rule of fiber vs sugar as a ratio. For every 1 gram of fiber 'up to' 50 of carbs ~ calories, with lower better.
I don't think this really captures the concept of "sugar". Here's ordinary sourdough bread: https://beckmannsbakery.com/collections/sourdough-breads/pro...
Serving size 38g, 22g carbohydrate, 0g fiber.
By the time you're saying that most of what everyone eats is nothing but sugar, you've taken things too far. Grain isn't sugar.
(I'm really curious what the rest of the bread is. The nutrition facts note 4g of protein, but that leaves 12 grams, or 32% of the bread (!) unaccounted for.)
Maybe other minerals, salt is some but not 12g of it.
The difficulty I have with this idea is that they would have to also not count as "carbohydrate".
> Maybe other minerals, salt is some but not 12g of it.
Sodium is reported to the microgram, so we know that salt is 0.5g of it.
For one third of the bread to be "minerals", I'd start to worry that it'd be more like eating a rock than eating bread.
EDIT: it has been brought to my attention that the missing weight is water.
https://www.nerdscandy.com/nerds
(Serving size: 15g, of which sugar: 14g. These numbers are rounded pretty badly. Compare https://crdms.images.consumerreports.org/f_auto,w_600/prod/p... , in which 2.5g of "total fat" break down into 0.5g of polyunsaturated fat, 1g of monounsaturated fat, 0g of saturated fat, and 0g of trans fat.)
A sister product, Runts, reports 13g of sugar in a 15g serving size. Spree appears to be the same thing as Runts, but in a disc shape instead of a stylized fruit shape.
Skittles are 75% sugar at 21g per 28g serving size. They have to be soft and chewy, which I assume explains the difference.
Some other chewy candies:
Sour Patch Kids report 80% sugar (24g / 30g).
Swedish Fish report 77% sugar.
Going back to the "it's just sugar" candies, Necco wafers report that one 57g roll contains 56g of carbohydrates, of which 53g are sugar.
> especially since the rest is corn syrup.
Huh, you might be on to something. Karo corn syrup doesn't appear to report its amount by weight. But its nutrition facts report that every 30 mL of syrup contain 30g of carbohydrates, of which 10g are sugar. So corn syrup will drive a wedge between reported "carbohydrates" and reported "sugar".
So what is the difference, exactly? Depends on what’s in the other 40%, right? It would be a bigger difference if the other 40% was made of fats or proteins or fiber, but in the case of Jolly Ranchers and many other candies, the other 40% of calories is cornstarch, which isn’t sugar but is made of glucose chains and breaks down into sugar when digested. Cornstarch, like sugar, is 100% carbohydrate. https://www.soupersage.com/compare-nutrition/cornstarch-vs-w...
@saagarjha didn’t claim candies are pure sugar, they said it’s surprising how close they are to pure sugar. And 60% sugar + 40% flavorless cornstarch + flavoring and food coloring is close to pure sugar with food coloring. Close is a relative term, so when arguing about it, it’d be helpful to provide a baseline or examples or definitions. Jolly Ranchers are much closer to pure sugar than meat or broccoli is. Jolly Ranchers are much closer to pure sugar than even a banana, which is also 100% carbohydrate calories. I don’t know how to argue that Jolly Ranchers aren’t close to pure sugar. Maybe you can give an example?
BTW, the current product website says Jolly Ranchers are 72% sugar: https://www.hersheyland.com/products/jolly-rancher-original-...