Jane: This is But Why: A Podcast for Curious Kids from Vermont
Public. I'm Jane Lindholm. On this show, we take questions
from kids all over the world just like you, and we find
interesting people to answer them. Do you have a sweet tooth?
Do you love lollipops and sour candies? Gummies? Maybe
chocolates, sweets, candy, lollies, whatever you call them,
many of us find these sweet treats irresistible. And here in
the United States, the holiday many people celebrate on October
31, Halloween, has basically become an excuse to collect and
eat a lot of candy. So at this time of year, when many young
minds turn to thoughts of sweets, we thought we'd learn a
little bit more about what candy actually is.
Craig Montgomery: Candy comes in all sorts of shapes, sizes and
textures. Usually it has a sugar base, or it's made out of sugar
most of the time, or different forms of sugar, like honey or
natural sugars from apples and fruits. But typically what I
think of when I think about candies, like chocolate or
gummies or like hard candies, like lollipops and stuff like
that. My name is Craig Montgomery, owner of Sticky here
in the United States.
Jane: Sticky is a candy company, so Craig is a good person to
help answer a few of your candylicious questions. The
definition of candy is actually a little complicated, because it
can mean different things in different cultures. What's a
candy to you might be considered a dessert to me, and some people
think of chocolate as candy, but others consider chocolate a sort
of separate category altogether. One thing, though, is for
certain: at the heart of all candy is sugar.
Ashton: Hi, my name is Axton from Edmonton, Canada. I'm seven
years old, and my question is who created candy?
Jane: Humans have always sought out sweetness, so there's no way
to say who created the first candies. Humans found sweetness
in natural substances like honey, maple syrup, sugar cane
and sugar beets. And ancient cultures created many treats out
of honey and nuts. So people have been making candy, I guess
you could call it, for thousands of years. But the kind of candy
we think about in modern times only became possible when humans
developed a reliable source of sugar they could grow or
cultivate as a crop, and then when sugar could be shipped
around the world, that was another milestone in the candy
story. Candy used to be something only very wealthy
people could afford to buy, but over time, sugar became much
more readily available and a lot cheaper. And the modern candy
industry was born. Some of the earliest candy available for
people to purchase for fun was very hard candy. It was so hard
it was kind of like sucking on a rock. That's the kind of candy
Sticky, the company Craig Montgomery runs, still makes
today.
Craig Montgomery: we make traditional, handmade rock
candy. A lot of people these days say this is like that candy
my grandma used to have on our coffee table. It was pretty much
created a long time ago. Came to popularity in the UK in seaside
towns, where they would sculpt the seaside town name like
Blackpool or Brighton, inside of the candy, and sell it as sticks
of rock. It's made up of sugar and glucose. And we put little
pictures of different designs, like fruits or animals or
skeletons and Frankenstein's monsters, different things like
that, inside of the candy, and we make them a little bit
smaller and more bite size and delicious.
Richard: My name is Richard. I live in Los Alamos, New Mexico.
I'm five years old, and I want to know how is candy made?
Jane: There are lots of ways to make candy, because there are
lots of different kinds of candy, but let's use the rock
candy they make it Sticky as our example.
Craig Montgomery: for us to make candy. Essentially, we're just
glorified sugar boilers. We boil about 18 pounds of sugar and
then we add a sugar syrup, because crystal sugar wants to
be a crystal, and it needs some sort of a doctor, like a glucose
which we use other companies use high fructose corn syrup, or a
tapioca, which prohibits the crystals in the sugar to
recrystallize. And so we're able to kind of work with those where
we'll add different colors, we cool it down until it's kind of
like play-doh. Or clay. And then we work on a heated table that
keeps the candy kind of squishy, malleable for us to kind of
sculpt each element of the design in three dimensions.
Jane: Let's break this down. Craig starts with sugar crystals
and water and heats them together to make a boiling hot
liquid. He also adds another kind of sugar to keep those
sugar crystals from turning back into crystals when they cool
down. You can actually make your own rock candy without that
other type of sugar, and you'll find your finished candy looks
like, well, crystals. It has lots of little crystals attached
to one another. But Craig and other candy makers want a hard
candy that is smooth, so they add that other type of sugar,
glucose, or corn syrup, for example, to help make sure it
stays smooth as it cools down and hardens.
Craig Montgomery: Fun fact, back in the day when they would do
like old Western movies and the stuntmen would jump through that
pane of glass, it was actually sugar cooked up this way because
it is very transparent and it looks like glass, but with
stuntman's glass, and so they could jump through a window,
it'd have that breaking effect, but it wouldn't be stuck in
their skin to where they'd have to be having it removed. So it
would basically kind of turn into something like glass.
Jane: But Craig doesn't want a thin sheet of glass. So when the
candy is in that hot lava or play-doh stage, they take it out
of the pot and mix in food coloring to make the candy lots
of different colors. And then they stretch and pull it to mix
in air bubbles and make it nice and shiny. This is when they
start building the candy pieces with words or pictures in the
middle. You might eventually pop one little piece of candy into
your mouth, but when they start building the candy pictures,
they make them really big, way too big to fit in your mouth.
Craig Montgomery: As we make it, it's probably about six to eight
inches in size, and we typically try and work in squares or
circles. So if we're creating, like, say, an apple shape, we
start out with it round as like a cylinder, or almost like a
pipe with unstretched candy wrapped around stretched candy,
to give it kind of this, like apple skin definition. And then
we put a little indent in the bottom, like your normal apple
has a little apple bottom, and then we put a little bit of
white inside of that crease to then create that shape. So for
every shape we make, we have to put an inverse negative space in
that, so that, because the candy always wants to kind of go flat
because it's hot.
Jane: So then they have a giant pipe of candy with that picture
in the middle, but it's still way too big to eat. So quickly,
before the candy gets hard, they pull and stretch that cylinder
or pipe of soft sugar until it's really, really thin. I guess you
could kind of imagine, like how you roll out dough to make a
pretzel, or maybe if you play with play-doh until it's a thin
snake, they're kind of doing that. The picture in the candy
gets stretched and shrunk down as the candy gets pulled out,
and what you're left with is a rock hard candy with little
letters or pictures in it. You can cut that stick of candy into
bite-sized pieces, and voila, you've got your rock. Coming up,
more answers to your questions about candy.
I'm Jane Lindholm, and this is But Why, a Podcast for Curious
Kids. We are learning about delicious candy and how it's
made. Today we have another candy maker joining us? Well,
actually. two.
Steve Andrianos: I'm Steve Andrianos, owner and candy
maker.
Julia Jackson: I'm Julia I'm a candy maker as well. At Steve's
place of business.
Jane: Steve Andrianos owns Hercules Candy. The company was
started over a hundred years ago by Steve's grandfather in East
Syracuse, New York. Julia Jackson is one of the candy
makers who works with Steve.
Steve Andrianos: We basically make candy the old fashioned
way. A lot of things are made by hand. A lot of things. We have
some in robers, which chocolate cover things, and we make hard
candies and clusters and sorted chocolates and ribbon candy and
all kinds of things.
Jane: They even use many of Steve's grandfather's recipes.
Julia describes the process for us.
Julia Jackson: It's pretty simple, actually. You just take
sugar, corn syrup and water, and you heat it up. It's called like
a hard crack stage, which you heat it up to 310 and then we
just manipulate it until little pieces that we want add the
flavor that we want. Once it's heated up to the temperature we
want, it's like this really hot, like liquid lava, and then you
pour it onto a cold surface, and eventually, over time, minute by
minute, it gets more moldable, kind of like play-doh-ish, for
people who don't look at it and. So it's at a point where you can
handle it and you can cut it into the little pieces. So it's
basically just, it's basically just cooling off.
Jane: Some candy gets bent or folded or molded into special
shapes that can take some practice.
Julia Jackson: My favorites is candy canes. I love making candy
canes. No one else likes it because it's hard and difficult.
But I love the little challenge.
Steve Andrianos: Ribbon candy, that's, we all, that's all made
with our fingers, making ribbon candy because we pull it out
really nice and thin, like a ribbon, and we cut it off, and
then the next person takes it with their fingers. They twist
it so it looks like a ribbon.
Julia Jackson: And it's hard candy, so you bring up little
pieces and crunch on it.
Steve Andrianos: It hardens up within five to 10 seconds so you
gotta do it fast.
Ava: Hi. My name is Ava. I live in Syosset, and my I'm eight,
and my question is, why is candy so sweet? I'm asking this
because it's Halloween. When I recorded this.
Steve Andrianos: most candies made with corn syrup, which is
sugar, yeah, and then more sugar. So basically it's just...
Julia Jackson: A sugar, sugar....
Steve Andrianos: Sugar concoction.
Meera: Yeah. My name is Meera. I'm three years old. I live in
Cary, North Carolina. And my question is how are gummies
made?
Steve Andrianos: Gummies and jelly beans are made starch
casting, they call it.
Jane: Starch casting is the method for making a mold for the
shape of a gummy so you don't have to try to get a gummy bear
out of a tricky silicone or metal mold. You just push the
shape you want to make into cornstarch, which is a nice,
smooth edible powder. The candy itself is heated up liquid made
from sugar and water and flavorings and some gelatin or
pectin that gives the gummy a nice gummy texture. Gelatin
contains proteins that will hold the little sugar molecules in
suspension. So you pour that nice hot mixture into the molds
you made out of cornstarch, let them cool down and harden into a
gummy texture. And then when they're all cooled down, you can
just take them out and let that powder be used for something else.
Knox: Hi. My name is Knox. I'm six years old. My question is,
how does Candy Corn get made?
Jane: Candy Corn are tri colored, triangle shaped candy
you often see around Halloween. Their shapes are made through
starch casting as well. Candy Corn includes an ingredient
called mallowcreme, which gives it that kind of pasty feeling
and color. Candy Corn actually first appeared in the 1880s in
Philadelphia, and back then it was called chicken feed!
Oliver: Hi, my name is Oliver, and I'm six years old, and I
live in Millersburg, Ohio, and my question is, why does hard
candy melt in your mouth?
Stella: Hello. My name is Stella. I'm seven years old. I
live in Long Valley, New Jersey. And my question is, why does
cotton candy dissolve when it's wet?
Steve Andrianos: That's just like take, if you just took a
tablespoon of sugar and put it in a cup of water, it will just
dissolve, dissolve away. So the same effect will happen in your
mouth. Or when the hard candy, it will just dissolve.
Julia Jackson: Yes, bigger likes warm, wet areas, yeah, it just
dissolves, just the sugar.
Jane: What's happening in your mouth when you put a piece of
hard candy in there is that saliva breaks down the bonds
between the sugar molecules and they dissolve. Okay, a few more
candy questions.
Evan: My name is Evan. I'm almost five years old, and my
question is, what are Nerds?
Jane: If you're unfamiliar with Nerds, they're tiny, colorful
pieces of candy that come in small boxes, usually one flavor
on one side of the box and a second flavor on the other side,
so you can eat them one at a time or mix the flavors,
whatever you prefer. Nerds are made from a sugar crystal that
is coated with multiple layers of liquid corn syrup. It then
gets spun in a pan so that more layers grow on it. They then
take on all the odd shapes you expect from nerds, and they get
colored. If you like, Nerds Ropes and Nerds gummy clusters,
that's just gummy candy with a lot of Nerds spread onto it.
Sometimes the nerds are stuck to a small gummy ball. For ropes,
they're stuck to a longer piece of gummy... How do they even
come up with these things?
Daisy: My name is Daisy, and I'm four and a half years old, and
I'm from Florida. I want to know why popping candy pops in your
mouth.
Will: Hi, my name is Will. I'm eight years old. I live in
Richmond, Virginia, and my question is, how do Pop Rocks
pop?
Jane: Have you ever heard a popping candy like Pop Rocks?
That's a candy that creates a fizzy, popping sensation when
you put it on your tongue. I actually have a packet right
here with me. I'm going to eat some and see if you can hear
them popping.
They're definitely fizzing on my tongue. It's pretty cool. So how
does this actually work? Well, Pop Rocks are made from the same
thing as hard candy: sugar, corn syrup, water and flavoring all
heated up, so the candy all melts. But popping candy is then
infused with carbon dioxide, which is trapped in the cooling
candy in lots of little bubbles. In fact, if you look closely,
you can probably even see the bubbles, though you might need a
magnifying glass. When you put the candy in your mouth, the
sugar dissolves and the carbon dioxide bubbles pop and the gas
is released. Don't worry, it's perfectly safe... and pretty
cool.
Jordi: My name is Jordi. I'm from Somerville, Massachusetts.
I'm six years and my question is, why can't we eat candy all
day?
Jane: I like the way you asked this question, Jordi, why can't
we eat candy all day? Most of the experts in human nutrition,
that's the study of food and the nutrients in food, agree that
occasional candy is fine if you're otherwise feeding your
body all of the other things it needs to function. But if you're
filling up on a lot of candy, your body isn't getting all the
stuff it needs, and too much sugar in your body isn't great.
A few years ago, we talked with a nutritionist named Wesley
Delbridge about why eating too much sugar isn't such a good
idea. Here's what he told us.
Wesley Delbridge: It's because, if you're only eating sugar,
like let's let's call sugar sweetened beverages like soda or
candy, all it has is sugar, and so when you eat that, your body
absorbs it very quickly, and your blood sugar jumps up, and
you get this shot of energy, and you feel good, and maybe you're
a little hyper, but then the body gets rid of that energy
very quickly. And then when we get what we call low blood
sugar, and that's where you feel really tired and really
sluggish, and you don't want to do anything, and you can't
concentrate. And so even though you're getting that energy,
there's nothing else with it. And so your body gets it,
absorbs it, feel good, and then all of a sudden you feel really
bad. And so that's why we want to have a healthy, balanced diet
with, you know, those "sometimes foods," but if you only eat high
sugar items, you're not going to feel good at all. You're not
going to get the nutrients that you need. You're not going to be
able to concentrate in school. You're not going to be able to
do well in sports or play on the playground. You're not going to
feel good even though the things that you're eating taste good.
Nora: My name is Nora, and I'm five, and I live in Grand
Rapids, Michigan, and my question is, why is candy be bad
for your teeth?
Jane: Yeah, sugar isn't great for your teeth, either. Certain
bacteria love sugar, and they create something called acid in
your mouth when you eat it. Acid makes holes or cavities on the
enamel, the outer coating on your teeth. That's why it's
important to brush those germs away after you have a treat.
Okay, that's it for this episode. Thanks so much to Craig
Montgomery at Sticky and Steve Andrianos and Julia Jackson at
Hercules Candies. As always, if you have a question about
anything, send it to us. We get lots of questions, and we can't
answer all of them. But even if we can't answer your question,
we love to hear what's on your mind and what you're curious
about. You can have an adult help you record you asking a
question using a free app on a smartphone or tablet, then have
your adult send the file to questions@butwhykids.org if you
like our show, please leave us a review or some stars on whatever
platform you use to listen. It helps other kids and families
discover us. Our show is produced by Sarah Baik, Melody
Bodette and me, Jane Lindholm at Vermont Public and distributed
by PRX. Our video producer is Joey Palumbo, and our theme
music is composed by Luke Reynolds. We'll be back in two
weeks with an all new episode. Until then, stay curious.