Candy: A Century of Panic and Pleasure

In an extended work of thoroughgoing research without any strong polemic, Kamash (Dislocating the Color Line) traces the evolution of perceptions about candy in the American diet, from rare treat to sin to food. Since sugar, rather than fat, is now largely considered the dietary fiend, a whole host of conceptions about candy foisted on the public by marketing, advertising, and media since the early 20th century are being reversed. Kawash walks the reader through candy’s changing fortunes, from the manufacturing innovations at the beginning of the last century, from the addition of the starch mogul, an automated machine that allowed candy makers to create ever more fascinating confections to the use of chemists in order to perfect flavors, to the enlistment of snazzy advertising themes that enticed people to see sugar as energy food (“the calorie was the best thing that ever happened to candy”) and good slimming fun. Yet some complained of candy’s deleterious influence on children and women, who were considered particularly vulnerable to its pleasures. In her proficient cultural study, Kawash looks at the manipulation of glucose, fructose, and creative derivatives of corn and soy in the ever-more-pervasive move toward processed foods, which blurs the definition of candy. Agent: Kirby Kim, WME. (Oct.)