One of my favorite things about candy in the whole world is something that goes on in your head, something that only works when you're eating candy. It has to do with perception of flavor. What's this you ask? Is the Candy Critic using big words? You better believe it.
You see I love cherries; I could eat a hundred of them. I'll eat so many cherries that many parts of my body protests and violently disagree with the amount of cherries I've consumed and really let me know it. The thing is I love cherry flavored candies too. When you see me in line for a snow cone chances are I'm thinking of cherry flavor. I like cherry flavored gum; cherry lollypops are one of my favorite things. So as you can see I enjoy cherries, it's abundantly clear.
The thing is that cherry flavored snow cone doesn't taste at all like real cherries. With a few exceptions fake flavors don't really match up to the real thing. More importantly we rarely expect them to, and that's what I find wonderful. If you ate a piece of tofu that was labeled meat flavored and it didn't taste real, you'd complain. But if you eat a cherry piece of gum and it doesn't taste like real cherry you're generally cool with it. Your mind will allow you to decide if that flavor is at least a good fake cherry flavor.
This is one of the things that makes candy great. Man I'm craving a snow cone now, time to bust out my Snoopy Snow Cone Machine.
Chris Stewart
Candy Critic
www.candycritic.org
