Just Noting That Your Candy Corn Is Made of Bug Secretions | Hacker News Reader

Just Noting That Your Candy Corn Is Made of Bug Secretions

theatlantic.com

31 pointsfortran7762 comments

Just noting that your honey is made of bug secretions.

Just noting that your milk is made of cow secretions.

Etc.

Following the bugs in your candy theme: natural red 4 is carmine, which is made from crushed insects (which are gross looking, even for insects).

chicken eggs are a result of chicken ovulation!

Yes, chicken eggs are the bird equivalent of menstruation.

Also your alcohol is fungal secretions.

wait till you hear how people are made!

How is it possible to collect enough of this stuff? Seems like it would not be financially viable product.

It's kind of crazy to think about. But silk is probably even crazier.

Candy corn. Farm corn to create HFCS in order to build candy that looks like corn.

I do wonder how the USA, historically speaking, came to be the creators of this stuff

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candy_corn

The history section says it all. There was a fad of agriculture related candies targeted at rural customers. Jelly beans, squash shapes and so on.

Don't forget we also have circus Peanuts, gummy worms, candy ribbons, etc. Many candies have some sort of shape and design to look like non-candy things just for the novelty.

True in other lands as well, such as marzipan made to look like fruit sold throughout much of Europe.

Also, chocolate eggs, coins, rabbits

It being Halloween yesterday I ate sour fizzy dracula fangs, bats and pumpkins.

> It being Halloween yesterday ...

This comment was made on October 30th. So "yesterday" was the 29th. Where in the world is Halloween on the 29th? I thought it was on October 31st throughout the world.

That's fair, the holiday is indeed tomorrow (31 October) but I have people here on the 29th and not on the 31st for scheduling reasons, I should have clarified.

Yesterday? So all this candy is for me now?? :)

I'm old enough to remember candy cigarettes.

Same. Usually found next to the wax soda bottles. Even as a kid I thought they were objectively terrible as candy went (like a pretzel stick coated in sugar) but there was something cool and grown up about puffing a fake cigarette at age six.

I never had the kind that was a pretzel stick coated in sugar, I'd probably like that better than the candy cigarettes I've had (and which can still be bought) which is just like, a rolled up piece of hard sugar, basically a rolled version of the stick from dipstiks

The ones I had were chalky like Necco wafers

So you could literally puff out and make the dust from the wafer look like you were smoking

Cool stuff for a five year old!

They still sell them.

Hmm I only remember chewing gum cigarettes. Agreed with the other commenter: puffing one was such a grownupy thing to do...

carved by gummi artisans that work exclusively in the medium of gummi

Unsurprisingly, it was at the behest of investors pushing for both deregulation and massive subsidies at the same time: https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9781642834444/ba...

A rational government might say, "If we provide you with subsidies, we expect stricter regulatory standards." But we're a far bit past rational at this point.

Candy corn doesn't contain HFCS. Corn syrup and HFCS are not the same thing.

Honey is too, no?

Yup

Dark honey can be worse: insect secretion digested by another insect and secreted again: insection.

Quite a few candies still use it, including I think jelly beans, gums and chocolates. Candy corn is far from the standout here.

Yes, the article mentions this:

> This glaze is used on jelly beans, Milk Duds, Junior Mints, Whoppers, Lemonheads, and Sugar Babies, to name a few.

No Javascript, no cookies, no SNI, no "bot protection"

https://web.archive.org/web/20261030132741if_/https://www.th...

Milk is mammal secretion.

Honey is bee secretion

There are many tasty secretions

> Honey is bee secretion

...except for honeydew honey, where bees collect the secretions of aphids or other plant-sap-sucking insects (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honey#Honeydew_honey).

"well, actually..."

Don't phrase it like that, please. And don't use that tone of voice.

Tasty wombat secretions... with club sauce

Artificial Vanilla flavour used to be commonly sourced from the secretions of a beaver's anal gland (castoreum). It still is, but not as commonly

So are (very old) records: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonograph_record.

@TipoftheBanana wrote about this recently on X. Great account on food manufacturing.

https://x.com/TipOfTheBanana/status/2111429520054231066

I already really liked candy corn, but this made me like it even more? This is awesome.

Always loved Lewis Black's bit on candy corn. (NSFW Language) [0]

[0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4vVGG_FcvY

Natural Red #4 is also made from bugs and a few candies use it still.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmine

I guess the atlantic ran out of AI doom bait articles.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50296375

https://archive.ph/SDzT4

Shellac is used to finish wood surfaces as well. Ridiculously versatile stuff!

really need to see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerria_lacca photos of the lac bug to get this

Also, your cheese is made of congealed ruminant squeezings.

People think they’re doing something trying to tie common foods to bugs.

In parts of the world people regularly eat bugs and bug products, sometimes raw. We should be eating more bugs, they are a much more sustainable source of protein to grow and when processed you can’t even tell you are eating a bug. I’ve eaten cookies made of cricket flour. Delicious.

Does anyone outside of US/CAN during halloween eat candy corns? Pls kill it already, or replace with something superior.

I think it's mostly used as a garnish here in the US. I've met a few people who eat it. But I've also met people who eat packing peanuts, so...

milk comes from cow tits.

Source?

edit: damn, seems legit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milk

other tits are available

Goat milk is good. I’ve never had ass milk but it is apparently expensive. Some of the most expensive cheese in the world is made from goat and ass milk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pule_cheese

I hear Ass is difficult to milk

Also remember that cows aren't magic. It's only possible to get milk from a female cow for the same reason you can get milk from a female human. It's a female mammal which is lactating in order to produce food for its young. The cow was impregnated - it has no say in this matter - and the baby cow has been taken away (and in most cases killed) so that we can steal the milk instead. So that's... not great. Given we're apparently still murdering each other in considerable numbers in multiple wars this isn't on my top-10 "Worst things humans are doing right now" list but hey, it's not nothing.

The calf is either kept for a replacement or raised for beef. Too much potential value to kill them straight away.

So is honey? And red food colouring used in a ton of products is made out of beetles or something. We eat bugs and bug stuff.

Shrimp are water bugs. People dont seem to have any problems with those bugs, aside anaphylaxis.

I can’t read the full article, but I get a little wary of topics regarding bugs in the food—-it seems like submarine article trying to normalize certain endeavors. Same for how I’ve seen an odd number of vocal individuals who are disgusted by crustaceans.

I’m not even against eating bugs, I’ve had cricket, I’ve had fried silkworm in my own home. I love snails. I like candy corn and this new knowledge is interesting. But I see a number of converging special interests trying to goad and “gotcha” me, and that I would still like to afford some steak and eggs every now and then.

I have to see Rolex ads when I go direct to the article and they want me to subscribe to see the entire thing. Good luck, The Atlantic, with your paywall. https://archive.ph/SDzT4

I had to type `wtf is candy corn?` into Kagi. It sounds disgusting without needing to know there's bug juice in there.

Do you usually use "wtf" instead of "what" when doing web searches? Does it affect the results? Funny lol

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