p. 233 | THE CANDY HABIT by C. W. Lyman

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Feb 12, 1894

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 20, No. 15.

THE CANDY HABIT.

By C. W. Lyman

Does the term surprise anyone? He only needs to look about in our cities and villages, and notably in Brooklyn, where women and children so preponderate in numbers, until nightfall brings the male element back in thousands from the metropolis. He cannot fail to come upon areas where candy shops are as thick as the saloons are at Guttenberg. And, like the twenty-eight or more liquor shops that nearly monopolize the business of the little racing town of Guttenberg and indicate the ruling proclivity of its inhabitants and visitors, so do these candy stores point to a deep-rooted and widespread habit among women and children. Especially is this so where their employments are few and light.

But is candy to be classed among the inebriating substances that humanity continues to mock and abuse itself with?

As the best answer to such possible queries I will ask the reader to observe for himself, among the active patrons of candy stores, how many are subject to irregularities of appetite at meals, indigestions, headaches, lack of habitually exuberant spirits, tendency to colds, and uneasy sleep.

It is true that a moderate amount of sugar can be digested daily, not without some difficulty, but entirely without harm. This amount, and usually much more, we Americans take regularly at meals, in our sweetened drinks, in our desserts, and on our fruit and our oatmeal. The unmerciful addition between meals of half a pound, less or more, of sugar diluted only with strong flavoring oils and extracts—here indeed comes the rub.

Digestion is inevitably disordered, the liver overwhelmed with work; and every structure in the body bathed for hours with blood containing either this irritating sugar in solution or the still more irritating products of indigestion. Are low spirits, restlessness, headache, a cold in the head, and a sour stomach matters of surprise to our candy eater? Is a visit to the drugstore next in order, for little liver pills, or to the learned but expensive doctor?—Dr. C. W. Lyman.