Sweet Tooth
Sweet Thieves
Earlier this year a truck full of Ferrero Rocher chocolates was stolen in Canada. The thieves stole approximately $363,000 CAD worth of chocolate. In the article by CTV News, they joke that the thieves must have a sweet tooth.
I have a sweet tooth as well. I recently made a Valentine’s Day themed escape room. When the participants opened the final box, there were chocolates waiting for them. What they don’t know is that I bought chocolates 4 times before that, but I ate all the chocolates each night. I can’t resist chocolate because of my sweet tooth.
Meaning
Having a sweet tooth means that you like sweet things. Tooth is used metaphorically for enjoying a particular taste. So, a sweet tooth is about enjoying sweet things. A sweet tooth is an example of synecdoche, where a part is used to describe the whole. Even though the idiom is about a tooth, it describes taste, which includes the mouth, tongue, etc.
Example: Halloween is my favorite time of the year. I can satisfy my sweet tooth with all the trick-or-treating I do.
Origin
Sweet tooth is a very old word. It is derived from the earlier word, toothsome, which meant something that is delicious or tasty. Etymonline dates toothsome to the 1560s and attests it to the late 14th century. In 1575, Heinrich Bullinger noted, “Secondly, a sweet tooth, and a fare mouth, that is, daintinesse, or choiceness in diet is an enimie to frugalitie, a needlesse charge, to de-light the taste for a moment, whole-some meat and drinke, would be more ease for the purse, and more healthfull for the bodie.” Basically, he was saying that buying sweets is expensive and tastes good for a moment, but regular food and drink will sustain you.
Evolution
There’s a really good reason why we like sweet food, evolution. Humans have large brains that require a lot of energy. Sugar, and specifically glucose, powers our brains. The people who had a sweet tooth ate more sugar which gave them an advantage in brain energy. So, the sweet tooth gene has been selected for. Scientists have linked specific genes to how people respond to sugars. The biggest issue is that we live in a time where calories are easily available (in the developed world at least). Having a sweet tooth, like I do, is not advantageous anymore.
Top Candies
It is hard to find consistent data on the top selling candies worldwide, but Candy Club put out an article that lists the top-selling candy for 17 countries. I should mention that chocolate bars and candy bars are the same thing. I am from Canada, where we say chocolate bars, but our neighbors to the south, USA, say candy bars.
Australia - – Cadbury Dairy Milk (chocolate bar)
Brazil – Lacta Bubbly (chocolate bar)
Canada – Kit Kat (chocolate bar)
China – Dove (chocolate bar)
Egypt – Chiclets (bubble gum)
France – Hollywood Gum (bubble gum)
Germany – Milka (chocolate bar)
India – Cadbury Dairy Milk (chocolate bar)
Ireland – Cadbury Dairy Milk (chocolate bar)
Japan – Meiji (chocolate)
Mexico – Trident (bubble gum)
Russia – Alpen Gold (chocolate bar)
Saudi Arabia – Galaxy (chocolate bar)
South Africa – Cadbury Lunch Bar (candy bar)
South Korea – Ghana (chocolate)
UK – Cadbury Dairy Milk (chocolate bar)
USA – Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups (candy bar) and M+Ms (chocolate)
See Also: Arrested for eating a donut, F-word, Food
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Reference:
https://kitchener.ctvnews.ca/363k-of-ferrero-rocher-chocolates-stolen-from-baden-ont-1.5739186
https://www.etymonline.com/word/sweet%20tooth
https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo2/B40355.0001.001/1:8?ALLSELECTED=1;c=eebo;c=eebo2;g=eebogroup;rgn=div1;singlegenre=All;sort=datea;subview=detail;type=simple;view=fulltext;xc=1;q1=sweet+tooth
Mergenthaler P, Lindauer U, Dienel GA, Meisel A. Sugar for the brain: the role of glucose in physiological and pathological brain function. Trends Neurosci. 2013;36(10):587-597. doi:10.1016/j.tins.2013.07.001
https://www.inverse.com/article/55376-do-you-like-sweets-why-some-people-enjoy-sugar-more-than-others-genetics
Liang-Dar Hwang, Cailu Lin, Puya Gharahkhani, Gabriel Cuellar-Partida, Jue-Sheng Ong, Jiyuan An, Scott D Gordon, Gu Zhu, Stuart MacGregor, Deborah A Lawlor, Paul A S Breslin, Margaret J Wright, Nicholas G Martin, Danielle R Reed, New insight into human sweet taste: a genome-wide association study of the perception and intake of sweet substances, The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Volume 109, Issue 6, June 2019, Pages 1724–1737, https://doi.org/10.1093/ajcn/nqz043
https://www.candyclub.com/blog/most-popular-candy-in-the-world/