I can’t fathom the mystery of the disappearing Hall’s sugar-free black cherry throat lozenges (not precisely candy, but consumed in much the same way) - the square kind that comes in a rectangular bar.
The full-sugar versions are always around, but the sugarless ones are a different story. Sometimes they’re priced ridiculously high while other outlets sell them much more cheaply. Mostly all you see are the smaller round sugarless lozenges in a bag, definitely not as good.
For awhile I had a source selling the good stuff on Amazon, then it dried up.
When I saw the mention of candy a few posts up, I was thinking of actual candy (ie ribbon candy, taffy and other things that involve boiling sugar to a specific temperature). It seems like using anything other that sugar, especially if the only reason it’s a substitute is because of it’s sweetness, would be like trying make blown glass artwork with plexiglass. They’re both clear, but the similarities end there.
Definitely an issue with both the chemistry and physical structure, not to mention being about 99% of the final product.
We make caramel sauce, and it’s just three simple ingredients - unsalted butter, brown sugar, and heavy cream. Four ingredients if you include the ten minutes of boiling to drive out the water that’s along for the ride in the cream. To replicate this without sugar? Better living through chemistry? Urp… You fall into the unsavory territory of stuff like this: Maltodextrin, Water, Maltitol Syrup, Glycerin, Sorbitol, Nonfat Milk, Contains 2% or Less of: Modified Corn Starch, Artificial Flavor, Salt, Caramel Color, Potassium Sorbate (Preservative), Sodium Citrate, Sodium Phosphate, Sucralose (Non Nutritive Sweetener), Yellow 6, Red 40. Maltodextrin gives the stuff thickness, while the malitol and sorbitol give you explosive diarrhea.
I’d rather have less of the real stuff than very much of the fake stuff, and as the label advises, it’s not low-calorie or “diet” in any sense.
Appropriately enough, I just went grocery shopping and, at the checkout aisle, they had a bag of those Hershey’s sugar-free mini-milk chocolates, so I picked up a bag. I bought a bag and just tasted one. Honestly, it tastes like a regular Hershey’s milk chocolate to me, but it’s been a few months since I’ve had a regular Hershey’s chocolate. I’m guessing if I had them side-by-side, I’d be able to tell the difference, but from one bite, it’s surprisingly Hershey’s like.
With chocolate, that might be achievable, since chocolate is mostly fat (specifically, cocoa butter). There, the sugar really is just for sweetness, and so if you have a sugar-free sweetener that tastes acceptable to you, you can just swap it in. And even if the sweetener doesn’t taste quite right, there are other strong flavors in chocolate to mask the off taste.
This =) Goes for anything unhealthy to diabetic or allergy challenged me.
I have this annoying thing - I actually really dislike peanuts - I would go hungry for a few hours if the alternative were peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. However once or twice a year I get an amazingly strong craving for Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. Not a big deal for me to ignore them normally, but they are now made with palm oil, which gives me diarrhea. So, if I am doing a bowel prep for something, I will take that opportunity to eat a package of them [2 cups]. If I am not having a PB craving, I might instead opt to have something with scallops [another food sensitivity] or made with palm oil. Silly, I know, but I am willing to deal with a food sensitivity reaction because I like something as long as I can control how much and where and when.
So as a diabetic, I will occasionally indulge - my nutritionist baked a random unassigned 185 calories a day into my diet that can be anything, or as I phrase it, I can pop open a bag of sugar and hork down 20 teaspoons if I bloody well please [or candy bar, or full sugar hot cocoa, or a piece of cake] I can actually eat anything sugary as long as I plan it into my food for the day.
For what it’s worth, my grocery store (Giant Eagle) has a full section of SF sweets, square in the middle of their candy aisle, including the Hershey stuff (ok maybe not Twizzlers). Right between the $1 movie candy boxes and the other bagged stuff like Trollis. Wal Mart has a SF candy section too but I can’t remember if it has the Hershey’s or not.
Not readily available at the gas station though, no.
The sugar substitutes don’t cook up the same as regular sugar, so some candies are very difficult to replicate. The sugar free candies can be more expensive to produce. Sugar substitutes can have a laxative effect. All of this adds up to more expense for a smaller market. Sugar-free candies are out there, but you won’t generally find them in the check out aisle.
Why would that be the case? Some people don’t mind the fake sugar, some have health issues. I didn’t say there would be no alternatives, but as you’ve seen, none of them have overtaken the sugar market.
Another possibility is, people might want a sugar-free candy as a low-carb substitute for the real thing, but sugar alcohols still have quite a few carbs in them. I don’t think I have ever seen a “low-carb candy.”
Every store has a few items that they stock and regularly sell out of because of just one or two customers that buy them regularly. When that customer stops buying them you suddenly end up with a lot of back stock of it. However, the real problem with “If you carried XXX, I’d buy all of it” is that they never actually buy all of it. More often than not, when someone says that, I’ll bring in the product, they’ll buy one or two and I end up having to throw out (or sell at a loss) the rest of the case.
Often what I end up having to do is tell them that I’m more than happy to bring it, but they have to buy the whole case since I don’t have any use for the rest of it. Some people get insulted (they seem to forget that if I lose money in the process, there’s no point in doing it), but many people are more than happy to take the whole thing when it’s something they’ve been looking for and haven’t been able to find until now.
First question is - why would someone want sugar-free candy?
I see two reasons
Reduce calories
Reduce sugar or carb consumption
So, the issues are going to be different for different types of candies.
Hard candies (aka boiled sweets, aka lifesavers & ribbon candy…)
First of all, people don’t eat these all that often. Second, the sweetness is only secondary, primary purpose of the sugar is the candy structure. But you can replicate the structure with sugar alcohols (e.g. maltitol). As mentioned several times above, sugar alcohols can cause intestinal problems if consumed in larger quantities.
So if you’re trying to eliminate sugar or carbs completely, sugar free is an option. But one hard candy probably doesn’t have more than 30-40 calories a piece (the butterscotch hard candies I have at my desk are ~ 24 calories each). And those are really hard to eat in any quantity.
So, people who are trying to reduce calories aren’t really going to benefit much from these. For people who are trying to reduce sugar consumption (and, sugar alcohols don’t cause tooth decay, so there’s a good reason for some to eat these), it will help, but that’s a small subset of consumers.
Chocolate based candies:
These are what people tend to eat a lot of, but…
A lot of the calories in chocolates are from fat, not sugar. Hershey’s sugar-free chocolates say on the package “Not a low calorie food”
So, you still aren’t helping the people who want to reduce their calorie intake, just those who want or need to reduce their sugar intake.
Then there’s a 3rd class - sweet, but not chocolate and not hard candy - like gummies and jelly beans.
Those are the ones that you can eat quite a bit of. And will find out just how bad it is to eat a lot of sugar alcohols if that’s what they use for sweeteners.
But really, it’s the chocolate based candies that most people over-indulge in
TL, DR: Most sugar free candies just aren’t going to help with your diet.
Welcome to the world of diabetes … I have to limit carbs and sugar in general, but I can hork down pretty much all the protein and fat I want … [within reason, I am limited to 1800 cal a day now I am not doing chemo and radiation, back then I was losing weight on 4000 cal a day]
Hershey’s sugar free candies have been in the candy section of every major store i’ve been in during the past decade or so. I used to eat them a long time ago (mid-2000s, probably), so I know they were around. They weren’t good on digestion so I stopped. I’m thinking specifically stuff like Reese’s peanut butter cups and mini Hershey’s bars, etc. Maybe they aren’t in the checkouts, but if you go into the huge candy section (for reference I live in walmart, target, Kroger, Meijer, Giant Eagle territory) of stores, they have them. Usually quite a selection at dollar stores, too, but I’m going to file them under not mainstream enough for this topic. I would think Hershey’s and Reese’s would be, though.
What part of “they could try some of the many other sweeteners available” fails you?
What I think is telling is how openly hostile to the very idea many of you are. Are you getting a cut of the huge subsidy the sugar industry gets or WTF?