Island Candy

The best candy for a steamy hot day and therefore a favorite of the islands is not surprisingly candy that offers a sense of cool refreshment like coke bottles or Haribo peach and gummi raspberries candy. Closer to home on Coney Island fruit candy also rules although lollipops and cotton candy come a close second. But, there is something about island heat that makes fruit shaped candy an unbeatable treat. Fruit candy, maybe just because it looks like fruit, offers a startling sense of sunshine and sand. Or how about sitting in a cool ocean beach, lapping up the waves and sucking on a coke bottle – doesn't that just makes you feel downright cool and content?

Of course cool refreshment isn't the only feeling induced by candy. There is candy that can be associated with making a person feel warmer and cosier or even more energetic, less stressed or more attractive. Chocolate is certainly a warmer candy feeling food, hot cocoa and thick dark bars call to mind roaring fires and snuggling under covers. High glucose candy will give you a boost, suckers will reduce stress and chewing gum is a definite anxiety reliever. In fact some studies have shown that brain activity settles from an anxious state to a more stable state while chewing gum.

Some candy, and it's an entirely individual experience of course, just jets a person back to childhood with a single bite or smell. Whether it was the candy store cabinet items you longed for as a kid or the candy rope necklace given by your best friend, each of us has a memory associated with candy that epitomises our youth. Speaking of young, it isn't just the memory of a candy type that is so nostalgic, it's the way we ate the candy. It was sucking a gumball till you got right to the gummy inner or, for some, sucking just long enough to be able to breach the candy's outer core and reach the gum.