Audio By Carbonatix
As you get ready for Halloween, you’re probably thinking about candy more often than usual.
The spooky season means that many people are headed to their local stores to pick up some variety packs of candy. But when you’re shopping, you have to make a few choices: Which candy are you going to buy? Are you going to be the “cool” house that gives out full-size candy bars? And what is “nougat” mean, anyway?
Some of those candy packs may contain Tootsie Rolls. An American-made treat, the chocolate taffy is part of our country’s history—maybe literally.
That’s right: There’s a chance that the candy you’re eating is over 100 years old. Here’s why.
Is My Tootsie Roll Over A Century Old?
In a Facebook video with over 905,000 views, author Jason Pargin explains why your Halloween candy might be over a century old.
“Did you know that if you eat a Tootsie Roll, that the actual piece of candy you put in your mouth might be over 100 years old? Or, at least, part of it might be,” Pargin starts.
Pargin explains that this is due to “the unique way they make the candy.”
“Every day they start by taking the leftovers from yesterday’s batch and putting it into a vat to start that day’s,” he explains. “And, they’ve been using the exact same process with the exact same ingredients since 1896. So, the fact that some part of every Tootsie Roll you eat might be over 120 years old—that’s straight from the Tootsie Roll website.”
As for whether consuming such old food is safe, Pargin declares that it is, noting the existence of foreign restaurants that serve “perpetual stew.” One such restaurant has kept the same stew going for over 50 years. This, Pargin says, is similar to using the same sourdough starter over generations.
“In every Tootsie Roll, there’s some microscopic amount that predates the invention of the airplane,” Pargin concludes.
Is This True?
Sort of.
An archived version of the Tootsie Roll website makes a similar claim to Pargin. The website reads: “[Founder Leo Hirshfield’s] recipe required the incorporation of the previous day’s Tootsie Rolls into each newly cooked confection, a graining process that Tootsie continues to this day. As such, there’s (theoretically) a bit of Leo’s very first Tootsie Roll in every one of the sixty four million Tootsie Rolls that Tootsie produces each day.”
This would seemingly agree with Pargin’s claim.
Am I Really Eating Century-Old Candy?
However, what Tootsie Roll is doing is, in effect, what chemists call serial dilution. This means that the “sample,” i.e. the original century-old Tootsie Roll mixture, is diluted every time it is mixed into the new batch.
Over time, there are so many dilutions that the concentration of the starting material begins to approach zero. Given that Tootsie Rolls have been produced since the early 1900s and that over 65 million Tootsie Rolls are made daily, the chances that your candy contains even the slightest piece of the 100-year-old original contents is, effectively, zero.
That said, it is possible, technically speaking—just so, so exceedingly unlikely that you should probably not worry about it.
Commenters Are Divided
In the comments section, users weren’t sure how to feel about this claim.
Some said that, given their thoughts on Tootsie Roll, that makes sense.
“Based on flavor, that tracks,” joked a user.
Others noted the limits of this sort of thinking.
“My car has never completely run out of gas so it still has some of it’s first tank of gas,” explained a commenter
“Tootsie Roll of Theseus,” stated another, referencing the Ship of Theseus thought experiment.
BroBible reached out to Tootsie Roll Industries via contact form and Pargin via email.