Sweet Success
This is a weekly commentary by CBS News Correspondent Andy Rooney It was first broadcast Oct. 21, 1979.
The two things I can think of that have gone up most in price in the last 10 years are hotel rooms and candy bars. At least the hotel rooms are still the same size.
These candy bars are all smaller. Anything that provides continuity to our lives is a good thing, even if it's only a candy bar. All these bars have been around for a long time now. I remember almost all of these from when I was a kid on Partridge Street.
Baby Ruth, Butterfingers, Oh Henry, Bit-O-Honey, Clark Bar. We used to freeze Milky Ways. I wonder if kids still do that?
Do you know the best-selling candy bar right now? You'll never guess it. There it is, Snickers. We have these laid out in order of their popularity. Reese's Peanut Butter Cups is next, then M&M's, Hershey with nuts, Three Musketeers, and so on.
Here's one of my favorites, number 14 - Mounds. Their listed ingredients look pretty good. I used to like Heath bars. They were small, but pure gold. They used to make them with butter. But look at some of these ingredients now. Milk chocolate, almonds. Fine. But hydrogenated soybean oil? Mono and diglycerides? Beta carotene? This is candy?
They keep trying to put things that are good for us in some of these candy bars. Hershey has a nutrition chart on the back. You know, riboflavin, calcium, iron,, that sort of thing.
That's not what I care about when I eat candy. It's like putting vitamins in gin. The way I look at it, if I'm going to eat an unhealthy number of calories, I want to eat the best-tasting calories there are: sugar, butter and chocolate. Hold the hydrogenated soybean oil, please!
Written By ANDY ROONEY