Candy Corn is Murder!

Wow, that was a fun title to write. And anyone who gets the pathetic B-movie reference gets a gold star. So, my daughter’s preschool teacher is trying to come to grips with this whole three-year-old vegetarian thing and while she’s baffled by it, she is trying very hard to be respectful. Thus the note in yesterday’s lunch pail: “Michelle, we are making Halloween art out of candy corns next week and all the kids will get to try them. If you don’t want your daughter to eat them, please let me know.” My first thought was oh no, they probably have gelatin (bone marrow) and once again I’ll be mean mom saying “No, honey you can’t have that. Everyone else in your class can. Mommy can. But you can’t.” I went to the web to investigate and no, they don’t contain gelatin. They have egg whites in them. Great. I broke the news to her, and she took it well, though she looked so dejected.

So after she went to bed, I did a search for a vegetarian alternative and found that PETAkids has a list of vegan candy. Handy. But no Candy Corns. However, they mentioned Jelly Belly and I was surprised that there were jelly beans in the world that aren’t made of gelatin. A search of the Jelly Belly site revealed that they make Candy Corn. Hope! Unfortunately, the Jelly Belly site doesn’t include ingredients.  So I went old-school. I called my local gourmet market, which I know sells Jelly Belly products, and asked if they had the Candy Corn. A store manager was kind enough not only to confirm it, but to read me the product list:

sugar, corn syrup, Contains less than 2% of the following: modified soy protein, artificial flavor, sorbitol, color added, yellow 6 lake, yellow gold 3, beeswax [which some vegans do not eat], carnuba wax, confectioner’s glaze, salt.

Her teacher was thrilled when I brought in a package today for next week’s festivities. And my daughter was giddy as, well, a school girl.