Starburst – Life In A Word

There was a time, not so long ago, when the Girl Scouts knocked on your front door instead of standing outside your local supermarket, selling their popular cookies. My wife would tease me because I never had the heart to turn down the cute little uniformed kids on my doorstep. But let the record show, I really do like Girl Scout cookies. And if I had the money to buy just one box, it’d be the Thin Mints every time.

I’ve been a mint fan as long as I can remember. I’m not talking about foods (yet) so much as the flavor itself. Peppermint, spearmint, wintergreen, or even a fresh sprig right out of the ground – they all speak to me with a sort of spicy vibe. I find a food so “tasteful” when it’s freshening your breath at the same time.

For a hot minute I thought the Girl Scout Thin Mints were gone for good. A recent headline teased the departure of a “cult-favorite” cookie flavor and I feared the Mints had run their course. Instead, it’s the lookalike “Raspberry Rally” calling it quits. No harm, no foul. As long as I can still buy the Thin Mints (and an occasional Caramel Delite) I’ll happily fork over the $5 (now $6) a box.

Had the Thin Mints really been gone for good, I needn’t look far to find other fresh-breath foods. Who doesn’t like a scoop of peppermint or mint chocolate-chip ice cream? A pack of Mentos? Listerine? Heck, I’ll even settle for that gritty peppermint paste the hygienist uses to polish your teeth.

Minty consumables really do run the gamut. You’ll find over fifty global brands of breath mints, including Altoids (my favorite), Breath Savers, Certs, Clorets, Ice Breakers, Tic Tac, and Velamints. But put all of these together and you still wouldn’t come close to the Starlight Mint population. The origin of Starlights is one of the world’s great mysteries. Brach’s Candy claims their invention, but if so then why do they call them “Star Brights”?

If Starlights are too dime-store for your taste perhaps you prefer the softer texture of a “butter mint”. Butters are often found, individually wrapped, in the lobbies of fine restaurants (gone are the days where you’d just spoon yourself a handful on the way out the door). I’ve always thought a butter mint is caught in a quandary, Does it identify more as “butter” or “mint”?

Speaking of a refined palate, minty liquors make for some mighty fine beverages. The first drink my wife and I ever shared was hot chocolate and peppermint schnapps from a thermos at our college’s movie night. A grasshopper (and my wife has a killer recipe for one) is a fresh-breath milkshake made with crème de menthe. And the Kentucky Derby’s mint julep is more bourbon than mint but you’ll always find fresh sprigs garnishing the top.

If not the Starlights, my first introduction to mint was probably packs of Life Savers. There used to be several mint flavors of “the candy with the hole in the middle” including Wint-O-Green, Stik-O-Pep, and Spear-O-Mint. But when the trendier Mentos and Tic-Tac came along, Life Savers headed for the rear-view mirror.

No mention of mint would be complete without a couple of failures (at least IMHO). In the 1970s the makers of Starburst came out with a short-lived minty version called Pacers. They never worked for me because I always expected those chewy little squares to be fruit-flavored. Nabisco’s Oreo, which blossomed into 85+ varieties from their black-and-white signature sandwich cookie, include ones with green mint filling. No, just no. Oreos are meant to be the vanilla originals. Food-color them orange for Halloween if you will but don’t change the taste.

[Side advertisement: The next time I fly overseas I’ll have to give Jet Blue’s Mint class a try. Their individual “apart-mint” cubicles allow you to lie flat, with lots of cushions, a TV, and plenty of storage space for your carry-on items. Fancy, huh? All that’s missing is a chocolate mint on your memory foam pillow before you drift off to sleep.]

Here’s a chicken-or-egg question. Which mint came first, the flavor itself or the stodgy industrial facility which manufactures coins? I always thought it’d be cool to work in a mint. You’re handling millions of dollars every day and if someone asked what you do for a living, you just say casually, “Oh, I make money.” And If it were up to me I’d give all those coins a sweet-smelling scent on their way out the door so they’d be “freshly-minted” two times over.

Our Christmas celebrations used to include a box of Frango Mints, the melt-in-your-mouth chocolates you could buy at Chicago’s Marshall Field’s. These days we go with Williams-Sonoma peppermint bark. Our tree will always welcome a peppermint candy cane or two. And if a Girl Scout should ever knock on my front door again, I’ll be happy to help her meet her quota, because the Thin Mints will always be a breath of fresh air.

Some content sourced from the CNN Business article, “The Girl Scouts are discontinuing a cult-favorite cookie”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

The Mohs Scale (which you have no reason to be familiar with) is a 10-point scale used to measure the hardness of natural substances. For example, silver and gold can be shaped into jewelry with the easy tapping of a hammer, so they only rate a 2.5 on the Mohs. On the other hand, diamonds are so hard they’re used to make drill bits and saw blades. The Mohs Scale rates a diamond a 10 out of 10. And then there’s titanium, which rates a 6. Not diamond-hard but still pretty hard, right? So what in God’s name is titanium doing in a bag of Skittles candies?

You know it’s a slow week of headlines when an article on Skittles earns a spot in my newsfeed. As if we don’t have enough high-profile lawsuits floating around (ex. Johnson & Johnson’s baby powder, Monsanto’s “Roundup”, Cleveland Brown QB Deshaun Watson’s, uh, “indiscretions”), we’re now dragging the “taste the rainbow” candies into court. Why? Because Skittles contain titanium (dioxide) and that means the colorful little guys could be toxic if ingested. Oh.

So this suit may not be so frivolous after all…

And yet, if scientists are to be believed, we could be talking much ado about nothing. Titanium dioxide (TiO2) can be toxic above a certain amount (operative words: can be). The amount you’ll find in Skittles is below this amount. But the consumer who filed the lawsuit uses the European Union (EU) as his “Exhibit A”, saying they’ve banned titanium dioxide as a food additive altogether. He is correct, except the EU banned TiO2 as a measure of caution, not as a statement of “toxic or not toxic”. Safe to say the ingredients in your Skittles won’t be changing anytime soon, and you can give in to the occasional sugar rush without worry.

I haven’t had a bag of Skittles in a long time. My last taste was probably from the leftovers of the bowl of candy we handed out many, many Halloweens ago. It never occurred to me to wonder how they make Skittles so brightly colored. Yep, titanium oxide. Without it they’d be slightly duller, like M&M’s. Subconsciously you might not find them as appealing.

Speaking of M&M’s, TiO2 has a parallel with a substance called “Red Dye No. 2” (RD2). In the 1970s the Soviets (as the Russians were called back then) created a mass conniption fit when they claimed the RD2 caused cancer, which was a common food additive back then. M&M’s was forced to remove their red-colored candy, even though it contained no RD2. The claim was never proven but it took another decade before the public conscience allowed red M&M’s to be added back to the bag. If this lawsuit gets enough press we may see the same impact to Skittles. Duller colors, at least until people make peace with TiO2 again.

To be clear, I can take or leave Skittles these days. Unnatural-looking, chewy candies are an obsession from my childhood, far removed from my relatively healthy diet today. But there was a time, no doubt when I seemed intent on spending more time in the dentist’s chair. Skittles didn’t hit America’s supermarket shelves until 1979 but by then I was already into several of their colorful counterparts, like Starburst, Jujyfruits, Now and Later, Mike and Ike, and Jujubes (the ultimate stick-to-your-teeth candy). Oh, and anything with the word “licorice” in it.

Skittles may revive my childhood memories, but not just because of the candy. “Skittles” was also a clever wooden game (way before anything electronic), where you’d pull the string on a top and send it spinning down a board, knocking down pins for points. Imagine, young people, a game where not only are no electronics involved, but no hands either. You’d just pull the rip cord on the top, then sit back and watch. Yep, kids actually had an attention span back then.

The other day in the supermarket checkout line, I made an uncharacteristic impulse purchase of a box of Good & Plenty. The little pink and white candies are essentially black licorice with a candy coating and they’ve been on the shelves almost a hundred years longer than Skittles. I’m surprised Good & Plenty hasn’t faced a lawsuit of its own. The candies are the same size and shape as your standard prescription drug – bright little pills. Then again, they’re not as bright as Skittles. Yes, they may be junk food but at least they don’t contain any of the “nasty” TiO2.

Some content sourced from the Scientific American article, “Are Skittles Toxic from Titanium Dioxide?”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Tag: Starburst

Fresh-Breath Foods

Clash of the Titanium