Life is sweet: candy consumption and longevity

BMJ 1998;317:1683-1684 ( 19 December )

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Life is sweet: candy consumption and longevity

I-Min Lee, assistant professor, Ralph S Paffenbarger Jr, adjunct professor.

Department of Epidemiology, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, MA 02115, USA

Correspondence to: Dr Lee i-min.lee@channing.harvard.edu

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Our attitude towards candy $---$ "if it tastes that good, it can't be healthy" $---$ betrays society's puritanical stance towards pleasure.Candy has been blamed for various ills, including hyperactivityin children; however, clinical trials have not supported this.¹

Candy $---$ sugar confectionery and chocolate $---$ is not a recent invention: the ancient Arabs, Chinese, and Egyptians candied fruitsand nuts in honey, and the Aztecs made a chocolate drink fromthe bean of the cacao tree. Today, Americans gratify themselveswith, on average, 5.4 kg of sugar candy and 6.5 kg of chocolateper person annually.²

Since candy has existed for centuries, we surmised that it cannot be totally unhealthy. We decided to investigate whethercandy consumption was associated withlongevity.

Subjects, methods, and results

Subjects were from the Harvard alumni health study, an ongoing study of men entering Harvard University as undergraduatesbetween 1916 and 1950. We included 7841 men, free of cardiovasculardisease and cancer, who responded to a health . . . [Full text of this article]

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