We Eat Candy Corn In A Weird Way & We’ve Got To Talk About It

Candy corn is already one of the most divisive Halloween candies out there. Some people love it, others think it tastes like sweetened candle wax, and somehow we still haven’t agreed on whether it deserves a place in the candy bowl.

Videos by Sporked

But it turns out we can’t even agree on how to eat the stuff.

According to a new Halloween report from Kroger, candy corn eaters fall into three very specific camps. And while I’m not here to tell anyone how to eat their candy, I do think some of you are making a rather simple task unnecessarily complicated.

Some People Eat Candy Corn One Color At A Time

Kroger’s report found that 60% of people who eat candy corn pop the whole piece into their mouths at once. Sensible. Efficient. Exactly how I’d expect someone to eat a candy that’s roughly the size of a fingernail.

But then there’s the other 40%.

According to Kroger, 28% start with the white tip, while 12% begin with the yellow end. What?! This means a substantial number of people are taking multiple bites of something that barely qualifies as a mouthful.

I can understand eating a KitKat one finger at a time. I can even understand separating the layers of a wafer cookie. But candy corn? An itty bitty piece of candy corn? By the time you’ve carefully bitten off the white tip, you’ve barely eaten anything.

And what happens next? Do you work your way through the orange middle before saving the yellow base for last? Is there a particular order that makes it taste better? Because as far as I’m aware, the different colors aren’t hiding wildly different flavors.

The white-tip eaters are at least starting with the smallest section, which gives the whole thing a certain logic. The yellow-end crowd, on the other hand, is going straight for the widest part. That seems like a lot of effort when you could simply eat the entire thing and move on with your life.

Is There Actually A Right Way To Eat Candy Corn?

I’m firmly on the side of the 60%. One piece, one bite. Done. Nice.

And it’s not because I have particularly strong feelings about candy corn itself. I’ll eat a few pieces if they’re sitting in front of me, but I’m hardly clearing out the Halloween aisle to stock up. I just don’t see the appeal of turning each little triangle into a three-course meal.

Although I suppose the people who nibble their candy corn might be onto something if they’re trying to make a handful last longer. Maybe it’s less about the flavor and more about stretching out the experience. Or perhaps they’re simply enjoying the opportunity to eat something in a slightly ridiculous way without anyone noticing.

Well, until Kroger decided to ask about it.

The retailer is expecting to sell 25 million pounds of Halloween candy this season, including nine million bags of fun-sized chocolate treats. So clearly, Americans have plenty of candy-eating ahead of them.

And if you’re one of the people carefully working your way through candy corn from tip to base, I’m not going to stop you. But if you accidentally bite off too much of the white bit, do you start again with a fresh piece? Because at that point, I think we’ve made Halloween candy far more stressful than it needs to be.