24/02/09: Eating Jelly Beans

For as long as memory serves me, I remember enjoying jelly beans. I loved their fierce sweetness, their hard, crusty coating and especially their soft, sticky centre that would get stuck in my molars and thus prolong my enjoyment as it continued to dissolve over the following half an hour.

My grandmother used to have a crystal candy dish on the antique coffee table in her living room, and though the candy (or at least the colours of the candy) usually changed seasonally – provided my cousins had been at the house to eat it – the dish was often filled with jelly beans. Perhaps because they were in a crystal bowl, or perhaps because they were significantly unlike the other (typically home-grown) food I ate at my grandparents’, I knew they were a treat, and treated them as such.

As an active child, running about my grandparents’ farm, I never noticed or cared about the effects of eating jelly beans; I simply enjoyed them. As an adult, however, I see them in a new light – as little morsels of refined sugars and artificial flavouring. Now, after eating only about a dozen jelly beans, I can feel my heart start to race, the sucrose surging through my veins and putting my body on edge. The “sugar rush” I used to see as innocent hyperactivity – and often an excuse to act silly – I now see as an unwanted, unsatisfying and short-lived energy boost, and a reason to go to the gym the following day.

The question then arises, do I love or hate jelly beans? I used to like them . . . but my interest in nutrition and healthy living has matured over the last twenty years . . . and though I have fond memories associated with them, my current experiences now seem to overshadow those . . . I find it impossible to derive simple carefree enjoyment from something which I now know has detrimental effects both to my own body as well as the bodies of millions of children who subconsciously rely on sugar rush after sugar rush to get them through the day.