Do you eat enough candy?

Candy is a food! That's the first thing to know about it. Candy supplies definite needs of the body, just like milk, fruit, vegetables, cereals. Candy, in fact, furnishes several vital elements of the diet, without which you couldn't keep well!

... Caroline Hunt, noted specialist in Home Economics, has therefore recommended that candy be made a part of the "sweets" ration, which consists of about five pounds a week for the family of five. Candy may constitute whatever part of this is desired.

So they were recommending that everyone eat a pound of candy a week!

Saturday Evening Post - Oct 27, 1928. Source: atticpaper.com

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Posted By: Alex - Wed Mar 31, 2021
Category: Advertising | Candy | 1920s

Comments

The 5 pounds/5 people "sweets" ration is rather skimpy. A typical box mix cake is about three pounds. So you could have dessert three times a week: one cake and two puddings. Maybe someone could sneak a candy bar once in a while, but you'd be risking having the full weight of the USDA bearing down on you.

Posted by Phideaux on 03/31/21 at 08:11 AM

The other side of the coin for this should be: "Do you have any teeth left?", or "Are you getting enough insulin?"

Posted by KDP on 03/31/21 at 10:13 AM

Not surprising that the National Confectionery Association was encouraging people to eat more candy.

Posted by Brian on 04/01/21 at 12:48 PM

If you replaced the cake and puddings with baklava and fruit preserves, the candy could be a part of a well rounded diet. You could even put the baklava in the "meat and substitute" group and the fruit preserves in the "fruit and veggies" group. After all, there is a reason why Greek people live the oldest in Europe.

Posted by Yudith on 04/03/21 at 06:25 AM

If you want to get technical: vegetables and dairy were their own food groups, exclusive of sweets, and extracts are considered even better than whole produce. This means a mixture of bean, beet, and milk extracts are the pinnacle of healthy eating. I'll take mine from cocoa beans, sugar beets, and sweet cream, please.

Posted by Phideaux on 04/03/21 at 05:35 PM

@Yudith: I'm afraid that's not true. It's Switzerland. Greece is pretty far down the list, behind even the UK. Then again, the difference between them and the Switzers is only two years and a little bit, so it's not as if they're doing badly.

Posted by Richard Bos on 04/04/21 at 04:28 AM

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