Sugar Savvy

The winter holidays and candy and dessert excesses are over, Valentine’s Day and its assortment of sweets is around the corner.  In between, I’m trying to indulge in my taste for chocolate without adding to my waistline. 

One product I tried is Bubble Yum with Genuine Chocolate Flavor.  This bubble gum, which is made by the Hershey Company, is just 25 calories per piece and fat and sodium free. 

It comes in a package of 10 pieces, each individually wrapped.  A cocoa aroma hits you as soon as you rip into the foil package and before your unwrap any of the roughly 1x¾ inch pieces of gum.  Although the gum looks more like a very deep brown eraser than it does a square of Hershey’s chocolate, the first bite is surprisingly chocolately.  It reminded me of a chocolate pudding cup, the kind you find in the grocery on the shelves, not the refrigerator case.  It tasted more like cocoa than chocolate, but with some artificial notes.  After not too many chews, however, the chocolate taste is all but gone and you are left with rubbery brown bubble gum, great for bubbles, not so great for flavor.

To be honest, I’m not much of a bubble gum person, so once the chocolate was gone, so was the gum from my mouth.  I was attracted to the candy for its chocolate possibilities.   I still haven’t finished my pack and I’m not likely to, but the gum might have more appeal to those who are regular gum chewers or who would like to blow chocolate-colored bubbles.

Ingredients:  Among the ingredients listed on my package of Chocolate Bubble Yum are sugar, gum base, corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, natural and artificial flavors, cocoa processed with alkali, soy lecithin, salt, and artificial colors.