Fiber Candies to Come?
October 12, 2010 at 6:47 pm 1 comment
Candy question of the day: why is the trade newspaper ConfectioneryNews.com publishing an article about FIBER?
“Novel Fiber May Blunt Blood Sugar Spikes” (8 Oct 2010) describes recently published research results on PGX, a “novel fiber supplement.” This research did not involve candy. Researchers spiked breakfast cereal with this soluble fiber and studied the blood sugar response to eating. Subjects who ate the fiber had more even blood sugar response.
Now confectioners are not in the cereal business. They are in the candy business. This coverage is very suggestive. There is a hint at food uses to come:
PolyGlycopleX (PGX) is a newly developed highly viscous polysaccharide complex that is reported to demonstrate a delayed onset of peak viscosity, “allowing for a more palatable and easy-to-use functional fiber,” state the authors. … The authors noted that the beneficial effects of functional fibers are highly dependent on the food matrix, adding that unpublished data has suggested PGX to be “just as effective when sprinkled on food as dissolved in water.”
Fiber that is soluble, more palatable, easy to use, and regulates blood sugar. Doesn’t need to be dissolved in water. Are you thinking what I’m thinking? Stay tuned for the next generation of functional candies…
Entry filed under: Current Candy News, Health, Ingredients. Tags: .
1.
Elsa Waagenes Udbjorg | October 28, 2010 at 10:20 am
It’s been interesting reading about trick-or-treating goodies. As you wrote, this started moving around the forties. We did mostly “Anything-for-Thanksgiving”, which had to be before 12 o’clock, since that’s when people were getting busy with the turkey. But we were welcomed in — maybe sang a song or two — and would be offered cookies and cocoa to be finished there in the kitchen, oranges, raisins and nuts in our brown paper bags. Our costumes were perhaps a mask, or painted face and funny hat.
Candy to us kids (I’m a 1929 Brooklyn model) would be the one cent kind, which we rushed to buy if we were lucky enough to come by a penny. We bought paper strips with rows of pink, yellow, light green and lavender sugar dots. Little tins — with spoons! — containing a semi-soft pastel mass, small boxes of licorice Black Crows or chocolate non-pareiles with the white sprinkles (I forget what we called them), chalk-white cigarettes with painted red smoking tips, wax red lips (they could be chewed when one got tired of vamping), small tootsie rolls, lollipops, jawbreakers, plates of chewing gum with baseball cards. There must have been twenty kinds to choose from, and we always got help from the trail of kids that were hoping for a taste. Sometimes we used the penny on a paper mask, that came complete with rubber bands to hook over your ears.
The drugstores sold rock-candy, which our parents recommended as something they themselves bought way back. It didn’t look as spiffy to us. Jelly apples we were not allowed to eat, because an apple covered with colored sugar was just disguised second-class fruit!
Five-cent Milky way bars were for grownups. My mother would put one in the icebox, then later cut us a thin slice for a treat.
Jelly beans were more seasonal. They were hidden around the apartment with small chocolate covered eggs for the hunt Easter morning. Chicken corn were in piles at Woolworth’s around Thanksgiving. I don’t remember seeing that at Halloween.
I’m a little interested to find out why kids today (I am now living in Norway) love ammonia-tasting gum or candy, hot-pepper licorice, something called Turkish pepper, all kinds of hot, sharp, shocking (to my tongue) tastes. Maybe all the sweet drinks need a contrast)