Candy isn't as dandy as it used to be.

Since the last post I did in 2019, a few things have happened to me and I've discovered and realized a lot of things, now being 100% aware of said things. This topic will be relating to something my grandmother gave me.

A lifelong curse.

I have a sweet tooth. It can't be helped. As someone who was a husky kid and also at risk for obesity and other health problems, not at that point but overall something that would have been a problem if I didn't sate myself early on. I think I covered this but I'll tell the story again of my path to a healthy lifestyle and the times I cheated, my first blog post to be exact.

So I was sixteen and during my checkup the doctor told me if I didn't take the initiative to exercise or at least take better care of myself, I was going to keep on gaining weight. Later that year, I moved to Georgia. As I mentioned, I have a sweet tooth, so that meant I was buying candy and chocolate and ice cream and other confections that caused my grandmother's curse to tug at me. One instance, I ate a bunch of candy that may have been Hershey's Nuggets, a sweet mix of chocolate with a hint of strawberry and cookie crumbles. I have not found that particular flavor of nuggets since.

I ate bags of that stuff, one dollar at the dollar store in the neighborhood. I ate so much of that shit to where I fractured one of my teeth, I still feel it to this day. Just thinking about them is making want to search online for them for nostalgia's sake. It really was a one-of-a-kind flavor.

In addition to sweets, I also had a taste for soda. I had a habit for making my own twists on cola, mimicking the various flavors of Pepsi and Coca-cola. Vanilla, lemon, lime, ice cream floats, you name it. I had a taste for peach soda. Delicious. But I hated root beer and cream soda. Around 2014, I decided to cut the drink entirely. At that time I had grown to love fruit smoothies and fell back on those instead.

Best choice I ever made.

But despite cutting out soda, I still picked at candy and chips, another habit that needs to be culled. I tried to cut candy out and go for alternatives like sweet potatoes. The first potato I had, I couldn't get into it. My tongue was still adjusted to candy. It took a while but I eventually made sweet potatoes a regular food in my current diet, and I don't regret it.

Around this time, about 2017 I noticed that some things didn't taste the way they used. But another factor in the difference in taste was that some candy I used to love had a change in the recipe, mainly to cut costs. Too many items, not just candy but a lot of stuff. Look it up. My adult tongue could taste the corn syrup a lot better. I especially noticed a change in taste with one of my favorite holiday drinks, eggnog. Eggnog was a nectar of the gods as a kid.

As an adult, it's still good so long as you don't buy the cheap stuff. And I don't care for alcoholic eggnog myself, I don't think mixing alcohol and dairy is such a good idea, right?

But overall, candy isn't as dandy as it used to be. Getting older, my body doesn't agree with it as much due to all the healthy eating I've been doing over the years. I'm fine with it and it shows how your body can adapt. A co-worker of mine mentioned that his body rejects vegetables due to years of eating processed food and junk. While he doesn't look sickly, how he feels is another story. There were times where I cheated and had a sweet and my body felt like shit afterward, so I can understand what he was saying.

Even when eating sweet potatoes, I still caved in and ate candy, brownies and ice cream. My grandmother did just that and I get it from her. She'd keep a box of brownies under her bed and a big jar of peanut butter with a big spoon all for herself. I'd do the former but the latter was too much for me. Fighting old habits is hard, but rewarding.

It's not just candy, I've stopped eating chips or buying chips to try to build up a habit of not eating junk food. Back in 2003 I discovered Utz no-salt chips and they're my go-to flavor after the Chesapeake-seasoned crab chips. I would pick those whenever I saw them on the shelves and down in Georgia it took a while for Utz to arrive down where I was living. I leaned on low-sodium vegetable juice in that same time, the difference is literally night and day.

I'm happy to say I don't have any pre-existing health problems and in my last post, I mentioned Covid-19 claiming so many lives of those who had health problems before. All the healthy eating I've done over the years has made a difference. It took a while, but I'm starting to see the fruits of my labor. There's still some work to do, I'm not out the woods yet. There's still meat, cheese, bread, sugar, you name it. As I get older and older, I'll likely have to cut those out eventually, and meat especially with the seedy underside of that industry. I took the knowledge The Jungle gave me for granted.

Cheese however, is the biggest hurdle. I can't give up muenster or havarti. I've loved cheese since before I could walk.

Live by the gruyere, die by the gruyere.