Candy | featured news

Goodbye candy bars and sports drinks. Hello baked chips and diet sodas....

Hershey's fourth-quarter profit rose 5.4% as the candy maker posted higher revenue and saw strength in all of its categories.

The scariest thing about Halloween isn't the spooky costumes or gruesome monster makeup — it's the damage that sticky caramels, chewy taffy and hard candies do to kids' teeth, dentists say.

California health officials are warning fans of the popular Red Vines black licorice candy not to eat the treats because they tested positive for high levels of lead. American Licorice Co. of Union City, Calif., issued a voluntary recall Wednesday for 1-pound bags of Red Vines Black Licorice Twists with a best before date of Feb. 4, 2013. It was not clear what volume of product had been recalled. Company officials did not immediately return NBC News calls seeking comment.

The first quarter was a sweet one for The Hershey Co. The candy maker said Tuesday its first-quarter profit rose 24 percent as higher prices and cost cutting helped offset rising ingredient costs. The company raised its sales forecast for the year, which sent shares up 5.5 percent near an all-time high that was set nearly seven years ago.

An Arizona State University student missing for 10 days survived on a Snickers candy bar, a bag of M&M's candies and melted snow for drinking water, authorities said Wednesday after the 23-year-old was found in a desolate area of east Arizona.

Candy shaped like marijuana that's showing up on store shelves around the country won't get kids high, but aghast city leaders and anti-drug activists say the product and grocers carrying it represent a new low....

The Swiss food giant Nestle SA has offered to buy 60% of Chinese snacks and candy company Hsu Fu Chi International for 2.1 billion Singapore dollars ($1.7 billion). The world’s largest food company agreed to pay S$4.35 ($3.56) for each share of Singapore-listed Hsu Fu Chi, an 8.7% premium on Friday’s closing price.

The Hershey Company says it is raising wholesale prices by 9.7% on most of its candy products.

Twinkies. Nutty bars. Powdered donuts. For 10 weeks, Mark Haub, a professor of human nutrition at Kansas State University, ate one of these sugary cakelets every three hours, instead of meals. To add variety in his steady stream of Hostess and Little Debbie snacks, Haub munched on Doritos chips, sugary cereals and Oreos, too.