Sugar-Coated Health Benefits
You’ve heard about functional food, food that has a specific health benefit? Well, I had to laugh when I read a May 25 report on brandweek.com about functional candy.
The report says that Hershey’s, Wrigley’s and Cadbury are all working on sweet products with a good-for-you claim. It turns out that it isn’t so much candy they are developing, but gum, and in one case, mints.
Functional candy is of course nothing new. Just about every over-the-counter oral child’s medicine is some mix of sugar or syrup mixed with medicine.
And even adults soothe a sore throat or mediate a cough with sweet throat drops. The report also mentioned BestSweet, based in Mooresville, and its Bee M.D. honey throat lozenges.
And many candy manufacturers have marketed dark chocolate in recent years as a quasi-preventative for aging, because of its natural antioxidant content.
Don’t be surprised, though, to see more candy touting health claims, with all kinds of vitamins and other nutrients mixed in to give it a double appeal, to the health-conscious consumer with a sweet tooth.
Chocolate-covered dinner mints with echinacea to fight off a cold? Gummy bears with Vitamin C to keep kids happy and healthy? Or chewy caramels that may rot your teeth but have loads of calcium to ward off osteoporosis?
As the popular song from Mary Poppins says, “Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.”
