[CaptainOfCoit]

> 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.

[Anonbrit]

Now take pure sugar, add a dash of mint essence and a little oil, dissolve in hot water then dry in a warm oven. Kendal mint cake.

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.

[dahart]

The difference you’re tasting is primarily flavoring, not sugar density, so that’s not a great test. People can’t really tell the difference by taste between hard candy made of pure sugar and hard candy made of sugar plus cornstarch, especially when other flavors are added. But anyway, candy generally tastes insanely sweet and sugary to me. What is the point here? The fact that candy is mostly sugar and people say so predates TikTok by a bit… centuries? Isn’t candy defined as anything sweet where sugar is the primary ingredient?

[saagarjha]

You can literally read the nutrition facts for Nerds or Jolly Rancher lol

[CaptainOfCoit]

I literally don't have those in my country :) Based on labels I found online, seems "Jolly Rancher" is more or less 61% sugar of its total weight.

[saagarjha]

I'm not sure what you're looking at, the nutrition labels I see are like 17g sugar out of an 18g serving size

[CaptainOfCoit]

From https://www.myfooddiary.com/foods/143911/jolly-rancher-hard-... (maybe the wrong one?)

Then I did something like "3 pieces weigh 18g with ~11g total sugars and 17g total carbs so about 61% sugars"

[mjevans]

As far as my doctor's diet guidelines go, that'd be 'effectively 17g of "sugar"'.

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...

[thaumasiotes]

> As far as my doctor's diet guidelines go, that'd be 'effectively 17g of "sugar"'.

> 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.)

[saagarjha]

Ah yes I you're right, I was reading too quickly and read the carbs as sugar. That said having candies that are like 60-70% sugar is basically sugar in my book, especially since the rest is corn syrup.

[thaumasiotes]

The other candy you cited, Nerds, is roughly 100% sugar.

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".

[CaptainOfCoit]

Hence my tiredness of that soundbite, because it's almost never actually true. But I guess it depends on if you see "60% of contents is sugar" as "pure sugar with food coloring" or not, at least for me it's a difference but I understand for others it's basically the same.