Candy Crack

I have a sweet tooth.

Give me chocolate, anything chocolate, especially that semi-sweet dark chocolate. I buy a large bag of semi-sweet chocolate morsels normally used in baking every other week, sometimes more frequently. Don't give me any grief about it either because, according to Reader's Digest and dozens of health-oriented websites, two ounces of dark chocolate per day is good for you.

And the darker the better. Have you ever seen the gourmet candy bars that proudly declare their percentage of cocoa content? Once you reach eighty percent, it barely resembles chocolate anymore. When you take a bite, which you have to do because breaking the bar into bite-size pieces simply won't work, it all just crumbles into a fine chocolate dust in your mouth.

You might say yuck. I say yum.

But my candy fascination is not limited to ultra-dark chocolate. If dark can not be found, milk chocolate will serve as a proper substitute. I typically don't find it as satisfying but beggars can't be choosers. Just don't give me white chocolate. It isn't chocolate. Does it look brown to you? Does it taste like chocolate? It's white. Nothing white can be chocolate.

"But it's made from the oils that remain after cocoa beans are processed into chocolate," you might say.

So, it's a by-product. You know what else is a by-product? Poop. My dog's poop is the by-product of the process during which the most beneficial materials are extracted from the little nuggets of kibble we feed her. I'm not going to eat my dog's poop, therefore I'm not going to eat the oils extracted from cocoa after the best stuff has been removed. It is chocolate poop and I'm not going to eat it.

Anyway, the other day my lovely Wife and I took the kids to see Toy Story 3. As we like to do, we snuck huge bags of candy into the theatre in one of my lovely Wife's tremendous purses. We had Startbursts, Twizzlers, Raisinets and Junior Mints. A fifth bag contained a candy we had never tried before -- M&M Pretzels.

The movie was great. The M&Ms were life-changing.

It has been a long time since I have come across a treat that has to be handled like plutonium. Left in the open, unsealed and unmonitored, this thirty-ounce resealable bag of delectable temptation will vanish, reappearing later in the day just above your hips and immediately to the right and left of your stomach. Candy this good should require a prescription.

Less than a week later and the thirty-ounce bag of M&M Pretzels is gone but not forgotten, gulped down handfuls at a time and with complete disregard to health, wellness, nausea, blood sugar levels, and self-esteem.

We know one thing and one thing only from our first encounter with this dangerous concoction: We can never buy it again.



ⓒ 2010 Mark Feggeler