Candy is a part of almost everyone’s infant imaginary and when carefully analyzed, it shows us that it shouldn’t only be considered a risk factor for obesity, diabetes, tooth decay and other health issues that plague modern society, but actually a subject with many opportunities for study. Under this premise The Candy Project begins its jurney, challenging the preconceptions about candy and trying to dignify it: reversing or neutralizing any charge of negativity attached to it, thus exploiting its potential.
Chef Andoni Luis Aduriz and sociologist Iñaki Martínez de Albeniz from the University of Basque Country take the lead of the research: “candy as a topic has not yet been seriously addressed because it’s believed that there is little substantial content to it: it’s associated with meaningless, almost irrelevant subjects, except from the perspective of food science, which has almost demonized this food for it’s risks involving children’s nutrition, specially. You need to leverage this stigma to invert it”, explains Martínez de Albeniz.
It was during Andoni’s and his team’s many trips around the world that they observed a strong connection between culinary cultures and candy and snacks for children. What is candy? When and how is it consumed? What is the predominant flavor of candy in your country? Where and how is it sold? What kind of candy left a mark on your childhood? There are endless questions about the subject and still there is not one rigorous study about it. Candy is strongly present on our day-to-day life though it does often, as many other truly interesting things, go unnoticed. The Candy Project seeks to answer these questions and rescue the true meaning of candy through a systematic study of its textures and flavors. The project will trace candy’s historical evolution, it will analyze the incidence in childhood and trace the relationship it has with children’s formation.
The Candy Project consists of two parts, one theoretical, which aims to generate basic knowledge about candy and another one that applies to more specific contexts involving social innovation in the form of gastronomic education. The research has the support of the global movement Slow Food International and University of Gastronomic Sciences, which its 100,000 members worldwide, from chefs to suppliers, journalists and other people from the gastronomic world. Its members are spread around 150 countries and have received a questionnaire about what the meaning of candy is in each of their countries.
The material that generates from these responses will help in the production of a data collection and subsequent analysis and catalogue of candies in a conceptual, organoleptic and nutritional level. This data will provide information needed to develop a “world map” the cultural diversity of candy. The project will show wether globalization has caused a loss of diversity in candy and wether ir has played a part in the homogenization process of candy consumption. We want to know if globalization implies a standardization in certain social-cultural processes and social etiquette involving candy: the “prize and punishment” and the game fomented by some candies, the encouragement of children’s imagination, the relationship with money, war, etc.
The Candy Project has just started…
