Interesting Facts

Licorice Allsorts are a very popular sweet in the UK.  They are a colourful mixture of liquorice, sugar, coconut, aniseed jelly, fruit flavourings, and gelatine. ( They were first produced in Sheffield, England, by Geo. Bassett & Co Ltd, under the name Bassett's Allsorts, but the idea of mixing up several sweets came about by accident.  According to Basset's own marketing, in 1899 a sales representative for the company, Charlie Thompson, supposedly dropped a tray of samples he was showing a client in Leicester, mixing up the various sweets. After he scrambled to re-arrange them, the client was intrigued by the new creation. All I know is they are delicious, and thankfully there isn't one bit of salted liquorice in them.) 

Almost one in 50 children in the UK is allergic to peanuts, double the rate of ten years ago. (The innocent looking legume can cause reactions as mild as itching and redness; but in other cases, it can produce vomiting, diarrhoea and anaphylactic shock, where the throat and airways swell and become severely inflamed, preventing breathing.  You don't even need to eat a nut; peanut oil can be found in anything from processed food and sweets to cosmetics and lipstick. The condition kills more people than any other food allergy.)

On safely reaching the summit of Mount Everest Sherpa Tenzing Norgay buried some sweets and biscuits in the snow as a Buddhist offering to the gods. (I wonder if there were any gummy bears in the offering.)

Jelly Babies used to be called Unclaimed Babies. (Aww, that's so sad.  Victorians really were weird.)

Warheads are the world's sourest sweets. (Warheads Extreme Sour Hard Candy derive their strong sour flavour primarily from malic acid which is applied as a coating to the outside of the small, hard sweeties. The intense sour flavour fades after about 20 to 40 seconds. The sweet itself contains the somewhat less sour ascorbic acid and citric acid, but at the centre of the boiled sweet is a small pocket of more malic acid.  I wonder what part of "sweet" they don't understand.)

Packets of sweets in the UK are starting to carry health warnings. (JellyBelly jelly beans, Ferrara Pan Atomic FireBlast candy and some swirly whirly lollipops are all carrying the warning that the artificial food colourings they contain, which include tartrazine -E102 and cochineal red-E122, are proven to have an impact on kids' behaviour. The warning is, "May have an adverse effect on activity and attention in children." Now you may think that this shows the manufacturers are being sensible, but they are simply following European Parliament regulations which ordered firms to warn of the risks associated with additives and colourings. The Food Standards Agency called for an outright ban, so I doubt the industry is worried, after all warnings have been commonplace on cigarette packaging for many years, but people still light up.) Source

Drop accounts for a fifth of all confectionery sales in the Netherlands. (It's a black and chewy, often salty licorice sweet. In 2007, 32,000 tonnes of drop were bought by 16 million citizens, to the tune of some 155 million euros (196 million dollars). But recently experts have warned that the ingredient which gives drop its acquired taste, glycyrrhizine, may be dangerous if taken in large doses. The substance, which is 50 times sweeter than cane sugar, can raise blood pressure. "An adult can consume about 100 grams (3.5 ounces) of drop a day ... without side-effects. For children, the recommended maximum is about 25 grams," the government-funded Netherlands Nutrition Centre said in a recently published warning. One sweet weighs about five grams.)