#951 Fruit Corn

I’m holding in my hand the nutrition panels from two foods. One of them would be considered healthy. One of them would be considered junk food. The healthy one says that it contains 0 grams of total fat, saturated fat, and trans fat. So does the unhealthy one not contain those ingredients.
So does a rock.
The healthy one contains no salt. The unhealthy one has 75 milligrams or 3% of my adult daily allowance.
I never got an allowance as a kid. It’s kind of cool that my food gives it to me now.
The healthy food has 31 grams of carbohydrates, or 10% of my allowance and the unhealthy one has 36 grams of carbohydrates, or 12%. The healthy one also has 10% of my vitamin C and 2% of my calcium. That is all.
So the major mathematical dietary distinction between the healthy and the unhealthy is 5 grams of sugar and three-quarters of a gram of salt.
The healthy item is a pear. Nowadays, they actually ship boxed fancy pears with nutritional labels. It’s kind of scary. You’d think nutritious things like fruits and vegetables shouldn’t need nutritional labels. But it sure helps to directly compare junk food to good food.
The unhealthy food is candy corn—basically, bits of sugar. Interesting to note that turgid bits of sugar have only slightly more sugar than a piece of fruit. Seems like candy cuts out the middleman pretty good. Pure energy. Straight buzz, and none of the unsightly peels, seeds, and stems.
Unfortunately, candy corn isn’t straight sugar. It also includes gelatin, dextrose, artificial colors (titanium dioxide, yellow 6, yellow 5, red 3, and blue 1). Funny, I don’t remember seeing any blue candy corns.
Must be in the candy maize variety.
Candy corn also contains honey. The label on the bag says, “Made with Real Honey.” But on the ingredients list it’s listed fourth, behind sugar, corn syrup, and salt. So I’m guessing it’s not a lot of honey.
Anyhow, it’s nice to know that when I’m out of pears, candy corn has many of the same daily allowances as fruits and vegetables.
Corn’s a vegetable, right?
America, ya gotta love it.